I have descended into boringness

So, since I moved into Catherine and Emily's apartment, I have not done a single exciting thing with my life. Since Wednesday, I've been packing, trying to get rid of the remaining food in my kitchen (amazing how long it's taking me considering I started with almost nothing), watching movies, wandering the city, and stealing facebook albums. I also read two books- in English, and because I wanted to- which was awesome. It's been rainy and grey for most of the time, so I haven't been able to get out of the house as much as I would have liked.
I've also been missing my old apartment- I never realized how great it was until I got here! Emily and Catherine's place is supernoisy and always freezing, even with the heat up all the way. At least once Beanie gets here I'll be traveling for the rest of the time and won't be here much. Only a few more days now!

I'm in love with Peru- Part 3: Adios mis queridos amigos!

July 5, we woke up early again (it seems to have been the theme of this trip) to go on the Sacred Valley Tour, which we had booked before setting off on our four-day hike. The tour was on a bus for the most part, with stops at a few overlooks to take pictures, a few markets- Joe and Robin got left behind at one because they showed up 20 minutes late- thankfully, they took a cab and caught up with us at the next stop- and some ruins. Our tour guide was really disappointing after what felt like weeks with Jair-Roger-Julio amazingness. A lot of the ruins were slightly anticlimactic after seeing so many cool ones on the Inca trail, but we at least discovered that Jair had done his job and taught us well. We knew every single answer to the questions the guide asked us and probably could have given the tour ourselves. We were also still excruciatingly sore, so the news that we would have to climb all over MORE ancient ruins and up MORE stairs didn't exactly make us happy. I got a lot of presents for the family, however, so I think overall it was a worthwhile experience. I did spend far too much money, but that seems to be the story of my life lately.
After we got back to Cusco, Anne and I headed back to the hostel to get ready while Robin, Lis, and Joe ran out for some more last-minute shopping. We all went to dinner a little later at a little pizzeria on the main square, and then met up with our Inca Trail group in the main plaza. We waited for Jair for about a half an hour since he swore he would be there, but eventually gave up. Our group was composed of the five BC kids, Paul and Adam from England, Randy, Melissa, and Laura from Miami, and Michael from Georgia. Basically it was my favorite people from our original group, which I was really happy about. We went to this tiny little bar called Km 0, which had live music and good drinks and even some dancing towards the end. Anne, Robin and I stayed there pretty late with everyone even after Lis and Joe left, and it was a lot of fun. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone finally, but we did since (surprise!) we were getting up early again the next morning.

After far too little sleep, we woke up the next morning and hopped on a plane to Lima. We were picked up at the airport by our hostel (they gave us a secret password and everything) and then chilled in the common area of the hostel for a few hours while they got our room ready. After everyone was finally showered and ready to go, we went out in search of food. We walked down to the beach and found a mall-type building, and finally decided on Chili's, which was probably the most exciting thing that had happened to me all day. Not only did they give us fountain soda, but it had ice in it. My cheeseburger actually tasted like a cheeseburger and had toppings other than ham and egg on it, and my french fries tasted like french fries. Also, the waitress divided our check for us and accepted credit cards. For those of you still living in the states- you don't know how good you have it. I was in heaven. Afterwards, to make things even better, we walked around and I smelled cinnamon buns, which I haven't smelled or eaten since being home. Of course, I bought one of those too, after battling a group of fashionably dressed, cell-phone chattering, latte-drinking, obnoxious eight year olds for my spot in line.
Just when I thought things couldn't get any better, we found a balcony that overlooked the beach, so I got to just chill there and listen to the waves for maybe a half hour, which I hadn't realized how much I missed until I was there. Basically that felt like the best few hours of my life.
We walked back to the hostel and watched a movie before going to bed early to ONCE AGAIN get up early.

The next morning, we had breakfast and left for the airport to fly home. It was kind of an all-day process but fairly easy and uneventful, and we were home by 8. It was good to be back even though I hated leaving Peru and probably could have stayed longer. I had some dinner and talked to my family/Josh/Lauren to let them know I was still alive, unpacked a bit, and went to bed.

On Wednesday morning, the girls came over to use the washing machines/dryers in preparation for leaving. I packed up a bunch of my stuff and brought it over to Catherine's, where I'll be living once my rent ends on the 15th. I got to say goodbye to Catherine, who was leaving that afternoon, and then met back up with the girls. We went to lunch at a little cafe called Helena near their house, and Anne treated me in exchange for me packing her stuff up for her. Apparently, she hates packing as much as Lauren does and heard how quickly/efficiently I pack. I basically packed everything she owned in her two suitcases, kept them both under the weight limit, and arranged it so she doesn't even need her second carry-on anymore. Since I got a free lunch and she was thrilled about only having to haul around three bags instead of four, it worked out perfectly. Then I made apple pie for the girls as a goodbye present, which their terrible oven burned but we managed to save. I went home to change, and then what remained of our BsAs crew (Me, Joe, the girls, Emily, and Ben) met up for dinner at Cielito Lindo. We had a good dinner, briefly tried to get into Sugar before midnight, when the cover charge kicks in, but gave up and went back to the girls' for pie and ice cream instead. After that, Joe and I headed home and went to sleep.

July 9 was Joe, Anne, Lis, and Robin's last day in Buenos Aires. I spent the morning packing Joe's stuff- he promised to buy me Modena in exchange and then never did, that jerk- and then went over to the girls' to hang out with them one last time. We did fun things like empty their entire toiletry collection into my backpack since they didn't want to bring them home, condense Robin's six carry-ons to two, and eat all of their remaining food. I said goodbye to them and then came back to say goodbye to Joe. After I sent them all off to the airport, I went grocery shopping, made/ate dinner, talked to Josh, ordered Modena and watched a movie, and went to bed.

Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Monday/today I have had the apartment to myself. I've been using the time to clean/cook/pack/move stuff over to Catherine and Emily's. I've also been wandering the city a fair bit, updating my blog, watching movies, answering emails, and stealing facebook albums to show all of you, loyal readers.

Here's the deal with pictures of my adventures over the last six months:
I have been stealing facebook albums from all 22 of my close friends here one by one and uploading them to snapfish. This involves downloading each picture individually to my computer and then uploading them individually to my account. It is time consuming and boring and that's why it has taken me a full six months to get it together. If you want to see them, here's what you have to do: You have to comment/facebook message me/call me/email me with your email address. Then you have to make a snapfish account if you don't already have one, using the same email. It's free and supereasy and they don't send you spam.

I'll keep adding pictures as my friends post them- Peru pics are now up! Enjoy!

I'm in love with Peru- Part 2: Hiking the Inca Trail

Wednesday was the start of our hike! We started out in Ollantaytambo, the small town at the beginning of the trail, where we got chocolate-banana pancakes for breakfast before heading out. The beginning of the actual hike wasn’t too bad, and our whole group went at a fairly reasonable pace. Our backpacks were HUGE, considering we were carrying four days worth of clothing/food/sleeping gear/toiletries/etc, but it the weight wasn’t as bad as expected. We had three adorable tour guides: Jair, 28 years old who speaks English, Spanish, and Quechua with about equal fluency and was such a sweetheart for the entire trip, telling us jokes and actually making the history of the Incas fascinating; Roger, who was also probably late 20s and equally adorable, but quieter. He would randomly interject with HILARIOUS comments on everything, and hit on Lis in a cute-but-weird kind of way. Also, he likes “tunchi-tunchi” music- what he calls electronica because of the way it sounds. The last tour guide was Julio, who was a little older and more intimidating, but also really nice. His English wasn’t as good as the other two so I suspect he was just shy.
During the hike, we stopped a bunch of times to look at various ruins and plants, and at one point Jair offered to let us eat part of a cactus which the locals do fairly frequently. Robin and I split one (the fruits are called “tunas”) and it was actually really good, surprisingly enough. We stopped for lunch at a little overhang, and watched openmouthed as the porters (the men hired by the company to carry the food, tents, chairs, tables, first aid supplies, etc- they’re amazing. Their bags are almost as big as they are, weigh fifty pounds each, and they were running up the mountain while we huffed and puffed every ten feet) whipped an entire campground together out of their packs. We all ate lunch together in the lunch tent, and were shocked by how good the food was. Every meal on the trail started with “happy hour”, which was coca tea and popcorn, and sometimes crackers while the cooks got the food ready, then some kind of soup, followed by a main dish of usually pasta or chicken or rice with vegetables, followed by this weird hot jelly for dessert, followed by more tea/coffee/hot chocolate. Jair kept encouraging us to eat everything to replace the calories we lost. I obviously didn’t have a problem with that, but some of the members of the group who are more restrictive with their diets looked horrified at the amounts of food we were served. We spent the entire rest of the day hiking, and got to camp tired but feeling pretty good about our accomplishment. After dinner, everyone sat around and chatted for a bit but basically went to bed right away. Anne and I shared a tent the first night and stayed up talking for a while before eventually falling asleep.

Day two of the hike, I woke up already feeling dizzy from the altitude, which affected me more than anyone else for some reason. After breakfast, we set out early and the group split up depending on how fast they could travel. Joe went up front with two other girls from the US and a guy from England, who were all experienced hikers and were miles ahead of the rest of the group for most of the hike. The middle was comprised of the girls, three kids from Miami, an adorable 49 year old southern man named Michael, and a few others, while I followed in the back with two Uruguayan women, who didn’t seem to have trouble with the altitude but just liked walking really slow. I was really struggling for most of the day (as in, took ten steps, couldn’t breathe, would have to sit down for a minute to catch my breath- repeated endlessly during the nine hour hike) but I made it up to the top of Dead Woman’s Pass, which was the most challenging part of the hike. This was thanks in large part to Julio, who walked excruciatingly slowly the entire day so I wouldn’t be left behind. By the time I got to the top, (15,000 feet, thank you very much) I was super dizzy, had tunnel vision, and couldn’t breathe at all, but Jair gave me some pink liquid and made me breathe the fumes, which helped a lot. I was ready to go again when the group set off for the last two hours of downhill hiking to camp. When we got there, we learned that showers were available, but the water was freezing. They recommended that we skip them, since going to bed with wet hair would be a cold, miserable experience at that altitude because the temperature drops so low at night. Joe and Anne went for it, but the rest of us decided against it. That night, I had to wear a t-shirt, sweatshirt and sweatpants, a NorthFace, wool hat and gloves, and two pairs of socks to be able to go to sleep. Lis, Anne, and I shared a tent that night, so at least it was a little warmer.

On day 3, we spent the morning hiking through the most beautiful part of the trail- really jungly and green as opposed to the dry yellow mountainside we had seen thus far. We saw a few more Inca ruins, which were really cool, and Jair explained the different functions of different rooms and temples to the entire group. We had lunch at a camp in a little valley, and a half-hour break, which was amazing. Jair came around and rubbed Ibuprofen lotion into our knees, since the upcoming part of the hike was the most physically demanding (as opposed to Dead Woman’s Pass, which was only that tough because of the altitude.) Our next stop after lunch was this field perched on the edge of a cliff, which was absolutely gorgeous and had a natural spring that was actually safe to drink from for a change. The entire group lazed around in the grass and the sun for about an hour, and we were taking our group picture when the Uruguayan women finally showed up. One of them got really angry that we had started without her (mind you, this is after we waited for over an hour before Jair decided we had to leave or we wouldn’t make it to camp before dark.) She then refused to join in the picture and stood in front of the whole group and refused to sit down, so everyone’s group pictures were ruined. After that fiasco, we started off down the steepest downhill I’ve ever seen in my life. The stairs were incredibly hard on the knees, as Jair promised. Although I was feeling a million times better since the altitude was lower, Robin was having some trouble with the downhill sections, so we sent the girls on ahead and I hung back with her. It took us several more hours to get to camp (we were the last ones, and thought for a while that we had gotten lost) and then we just collapsed because our bodies were in so much pain. For anyone that ever hears that hiking up is more difficult than hiking down: it’s a lie. The breathing is more difficult and that’s it.
Since that night was our last night on the trail, we went to a little restaurant near the trail for our last happy hour and dinner. We all tried the local Cusquena beer, which was pretty good, and then our chefs used the restaurant kitchens to prepare us our last real meal. They brought out a homemade birthday cake for one of the English boys, and made a fantastic dinner that blew us all away- six or seven different main dishes, etc. After dinner, we all got in a big circle and introduced ourselves formally to the porters, and vice versa. There was one adorable porter in his sixties who has been hiking the trail twice a week since he was 17- crazy. We all got some group pictures and then headed to bed.

Day 4, we all got up at 345 in the morning and had a superearly breakfast, and set off hiking while it was still dark in order to get to Machu Picchu before sunrise. It was a really pleasant hike for most of the time, except for poor Robin and Anne, who were both really sick. The very last part before we got to the Sun Gate was literally a sheer vertical climb that involved using hands, feet, knees, and elbows to get to the top. At the Sun Gate, which is an old Incan ruin that overlooks Machu Picchu, we waited for about half an hour for the clouds to clear so we could see Machu Picchu from above. (PS- yes, I mean clouds, not fog. Even after descending for two days we were still well above the clouds.) They didn't clear, though, so Jair brought us the rest of the way to Machu Picchu and secured our entrance tickets. They only offer 500 admissions a day to Machu Picchu, so it's really competitive to get in (hence the arriving before sunrise.) The sun was just hitting Machu Picchu as we got there, and it was absolutely amazing. It's one of those places where pictures don't do it justice AT ALL- and the part you see in the pictures is maybe a quarter of what's actually there. We did a two hour tour, but could have stayed there all day because there was so much to see. After that, Anne, Robin and I hopped on a bus to Aguas Calientes, the closest town, to meet up with our group again for a final goodbye lunch. Lis and Joe showed up shortly after with a few other people as well. We all had lunch together and watched Chris eat cuy- a Peruvian delicacy which is actually guinea pig. I was tempted to try it until I saw that it comes to the table still looking like a guinea pig, and you have to eat it with your hands. After watching the process I wasn't so interested in the idea.
After lunch, Jair brought us all to the train station, where we took a train to Ollantaytambo, the town at the beginning of the trail, where we caught our bus home. After an extended fiasco in which the bus company had never heard of our hostel and refused to drop us off there (it was about ten blocks from the main plaza, where their office is) we made it back and showered for the first time in four days. In all of the pictures from the trail, we're wearing hats partially because of the sun, and partially to cover our gross hair. It was nice to be able to walk around with a bare head again. Robin fell asleep immediately, but the rest of us went out to grab dinner at a little restaurant before coming back and going to sleep. Sleeping in a real bed that night was AMAZING.

I'm in love with Peru- Part 1: Lima and Cusco

Our plane touched down in Lima, Peru, where we had about five hours to kill before our bus to Cusco left. We trudged around Lima in our tourist attire with all of our massive bags, and listened to people walking by discussing how we were going to be robbed before the day was out. Altogether a very uncomfortable experience. Other than the Plaza de Armas, which was beautiful, Lima was kind of a disappointment. It was really dirty and commercial, with lots of ugly grey concrete and billboards and trash everywhere. I was relieved that we only had to stay there for a few hours, and we ended up going to the bus terminal early just because we were so bored and paranoid. We bought some snacks and hopped on our bus to Cusco.
Over the next 25 hours (all of which were spent on the bus) we watched five movies, ate three meals, and slept for a while. I also made friends with the Israeli boy sitting next to me (we talked so much that my friends sitting behind me were a little weirded out and offered to rescue me, thinking he was one of those awkward people that talks incessantly) and acted as a translator between a group of tourists and the bus conductor. The bus ride was supposed to be 21 hours long and ended up being around 25, but at least towards the end the scenery was beautiful. We finally got to the bus station and were met by the lady from our hostel, who took us there right away. We checked into the hostel, showered and such, and headed out to explore a bit and find some dinner. Since it was Sunday, most places were closed, but we found a tiny pizza place that ended up being really good. Cusco was beautiful, full of old buildings and churches, so we didn't mind so much that we had to wander for so long to find food. After dinner, we went back to the hostel and passed out.

On Monday morning, we had breakfast at the hostel and then left to wander around the city for a bit. We went to the travel office to finalize our reservations for the Inca Trail, and went to a little cafe for lunch. After arguing with the waitress for about ten minutes, we determined that over two-thirds of their menu was not available, so I had some really boring soup and got out of there as fast as possible. After lunch, we got picked up by a tour bus for a city tour, which was really cool. Our guide, Carlos, took us to a cool museum that was originally an Inca temple and then was partially destroyed to make way for a Jesuit monastery. We got to see parts of each, and then went to Saqsawaman, the old ruins above the city. We got to see the Christo that overlooks the city even though it wasn't one of our stops, but we got to climb all over the ruins and learned a ton of stuff about the city's origins and such. After that, we hopped back on the bus and went to another old ruin, which was constructed with three levels to correspond with the three Incan levels of the world, and then we went to the Fountain of Youth. As our guide explained to us, splashing your face with the water will give you eternal youth, but drinking it will give you eternal diarrhea. Needless to say, we didn't drink any, but supposedly we'll all be young forever now. After that, our final stop was an Alpaca factory, which had tons of Alpaca gloves, hats, scarves, sweaters, etc. I got some presents for people back home, and then we headed home. At the hostel, we had a meeting with the Inca trail guides, where we arranged to rent backpacks and sleeping bags/mats for the four day hike. That night, we went to a really cute restaurant called Victor Vittoria, where we each got a bread basket, salad, two drinks, trout dinner, dessert, and coffee for about ten bucks each- plus all of it was delicious. Definitely a nice end to the day.

Tuesday was our last day before the hike, so we ran around all day buying water purification tablets, flashlights, and coca products (candies, cookies, leaves, etc- all from the same plant that cocaine is derived from. The leaves and other things are supposed to help with altitude sickness so we stocked up.) We all bought a bunch of presents and souveniers and got lunch at an outdoor restaurant in one of the main squares. I got accosted by two women in Peruvian garb, who threw a baby goat in my arms despite the fact that I refused several times, let us take a picture, and then screamed at me when I told them I didn't have any US dollars on me to tip them. (I wouldn't have anyway, but it also happened to be true.) The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping/exploring/doing other things that I can't think of right now until dinner. For dinner, we went to a Mexican-Italian-Peruvian restaurant (not kidding) called Chez Maggie, which ended up being great. We got back tot he hostel and started making preparations for the hike. I took my last shower for the next four days only to have the hot water die on me two minutes in, which was pretty depressing.

When "finals" doesn't just mean exams

Tuesday, June 23, I skipped my morning Cuentos class (I figured I still have two more excused absences, and listening to other people talk about their papers when I could be using the time to write my own seemed a little silly.) Hung out in the depto all day with Lauren and Joe and worked on my papers while Roxana attempted to clean around the three of us. I went to my Premios class to turn in my final exam, which turned into a two-hour ordeal as my professor attempted to teach us new material even though technically we had already completed the course. We finally escaped and did a little dance in the hallway- that class was easily the worst class of my life, even though the professor was nice and the workload was a joke. Even so, those three hours every week seemed like ten. I went home to start studying for history, and hung out with Ben and Lauren for a bit before going to bed.

The next morning, Lauren and I studied and finished the readings until it was time to go. The three of us hopped on the colectivo, took the final, which was not hard but was intensely boring. Sergio didn't show up, and neither did Silvana, who was supposed to administer the exam, which was kind of sad since we were all hoping for a chance to say goodbye and thank them both. Afterwards, I headed straight home to work on my Cuentos paper. I worked on it straight through until 230am (interrupted only by Kela coming over for a bit) and then went to sleep for a few hours.
I woke up by 5 to finish the paper (biggest piece of crap I've ever written- and in eight pages of Spanish, to boot) and printed it out at a locutorio nearby. I'm pretty sure the security guards were completely baffled by my nighttime activities (and outfits) that night, but at least I got everything done. That morning, I went to Cuentos and got rid of the POS paper, and then sat around eating cookies for an hour and a half listening to my professor make an attempt to be nice to us for the first time all semester so we wouldn't blast her on our course evaluations. (I did anyway.) I headed back home after another brief victory dance in the hallway, and studied and skyped for the rest of the afternoon. After making the hour-long trek to school for my evening final, I discovered that my prof was stuck in traffic and would not be showing up to administer it. I then had to trek an hour back and wait around all night for him to post the prompt online for us to email in, which he never did. Lauren and I made a brief effort to go out- got dressed and ready and everything- before deciding that we were both exhausted and collapsing into bed. Not exactly the most exciting way to celebrate the last day of classes, but very satisfying.

Friday was our first day of freedom, which of course we spent doing errands because our lives got put on hold for finals week. We did laundry and ordered Modena and skyped our various favorite people, and then spent the afternoon packing Lauren's stuff to go home. Since she is legendarily horrible at packing and I am actually pretty good at it, it worked out fairly well and we finished in less than two hours. At that point, the prompt for my final had been posted, so I had to rush through it to email it in before our dinner reservations. I ended up writing it in 25 minutes, which may not have been the best decision, but made it to dinner on time. Our whole crew met up for a last goodbye dinner/Happy birthday dinner for Steve at Meridian, which was a lot of fun. It turned sad at the end since I had to say goodbye to Memo and Kela for the last time, but at least I could postpone the rest of the goodbyes until later. I went home and talked to Josh for a bit, showered and packed, and went to bed at around 230 intending to get at least a few hours of sleep. Instead, Lauren and I stayed up talking until well after 330, which killed the sleeping plan but was nice since it was the last late-night roomie chat we'll have for a while.

On Saturday, Joe and I got up at 4am to get ready to leave for Peru! We tackled the still-sleeping Lauren to say goodbye, which was sad but too rushed for anyone to really get upset. After that, Joe and I headed out in a cab and met up with the girls at the airport to start our big adventure. Our flight was delayed by more than an hour (such a typical start to any vacation plans in Argentina) so we hung out and got breakfast in the airport to kill some time. We finally got on the plane after a few hours, and were on our way. Our adventures in Peru are going to have their own entry, however, because it definitely deserves its own spotlight. More to come!

Settling in for finals and...swine flu?

Monday, June 15th was completely unremarkable other than the fact that it marks the one-month mark of time I have left in my apartment. Weird. I spent the day doing homework, since I was still too sick to do much else with my life. Tuesday was similar, with the only difference being that I dragged myself out of bed to go to class and was miserable in the library all day, instead of on my couch. However, when I came home, Lauren surprised me with sushi for dinner, which was amazing a) because I love sushi, b) because I didn't have to cook, and c) because she refused to let me pay her back. Love her :)

On Wednesday Lauren and I decided that staying in the apartment all day and procrastinating was not the best idea, since we were both swamped with end-of-the-semester assignments, so we woke up early and headed to the UCA library. I had planned on spending the day researching for my second paper, but my computer decided to freak out on me and couldn't figure out how to access any of the wireless networks. I was then forced to work on my other paper, which I was not as worried about, but I managed to get a significant part of it done in a couple of hours, as did Lauren. Ben showed up and joined our paper-writing party until it was time for history. Sergio was almost an hour late for class, which was annoying since we all had things we needed to be doing, but he gave us a quick review of what would be on the final and we headed out. Lauren and I went to Cafe Suarez with the intention of grabbing some dinner and settling in with our laptops for another couple hours of work, but after we finished our food and sat there waiting for the guy sitting at the only table with an outlet for over an hour, we decided it wasn't worth it and went home. Thankfully we were able to focus and get some work done before bed, but definitely not as much as we had hoped.

Thursday involved giving a slightly delirious and incoherent presentation of the paper that I had yet to write- I don't remember what I said, which is probably not a good thing, but I lived through it at any rate. I came home in between classes to work on my papers/try to nap (unsuccessfully), went back for my 6-9 class, and went home to sleep as soon as possible after that.

Friday and Saturday were spent curled up in a ball on the couch because I was too sick and exhausted to do anything (at this point, I have been sick for almost three weeks- awesome. My mom suspects it might be the flu.) Sunday was the first day that I FINALLY started feeling better (aka could walk down the hallway without having to sit down and rest, could eat solid food, etc- THANK GOD) so I took it easy all day. I called my dad to wish him a happy father's day, and also got to talk to the Vaillancourts and Grandma and Grandpa, which was great. Later that night I went out to sushi dinner/girls night with Lis, Anne, and Robin, which was a lot of fun. After dinner, Robin headed home to get some work done, but Anne and Lis and I went to see Secretos del poder, which was really good. After I got home I watched part of a movie with Joe and Lauren and went to bed.

Today is officially 40 days until I'm home again- I can't believe it's going by so fast. (Some of my friends will be home by this time next week- that's crazy!) The next week is going to insane- finals, final papers, goodbye dinners, packing, getting all my school paperwork in order, etc. Less than a week until Peru!

Today

Elizabeth comes to BsAs!!

On Wednesday, I woke up superearly and hopped on the subte/colectivo to the airport to pick up Elizabeth! The airport was freezing and full of people wearing masks (swine flu, anyone?) but I found Elizabeth without much trouble and we hopped in a cab home. We went to Mark's deli for lunch with Lauren and then I introduced Elizabeth to Modena. She took her first bite of Argentine ice cream and swore she was never going home. After that, we went home so she could rest/so I could write my history paper, and then I took her to class with me to meet everybody. After class and a very crowded/uncomfortable subte ride home, we made stir fry for dinner, watched a movie, and went to bed early. I figured dragging her to the dinner/show/club event that we had planned was not the best idea since she hadn't slept in about two days, which turned out to be a good decision.

On Thursday, I let her sleep late and went to class as usual, and met up with her in the school lobby later, where Lauren had dropped her off. We spent the day exploring Puerto Madero, where my school is, the Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Rosada, and did the tourist thing and walked up and down Calle Florida. I showed her where I used to live and took her to lunch at Desiderio (hadn't been there in months but it was nice to go back.) We wandered around Plaza San Martin and I showed her all of the cool things that I love about Recoleta and Retiro. For the Mulligans: we also saw the Torre de los Ingleses and la Puente de la mujer. We spent a few more hours wandering around so she could see the ecological preserve, and got ice cream at the little stand near UCA. The guy serving the ice cream was so fascinated by Elizabeth's eyes that he asked her to take a picture of them so he could print the picture, cut out her eyes, and paste them over his. Slightly creepy, but we'll probably never see him again so it wasn't a big deal. After that, we both went to my Revoluciones class and were endlessly entertained by my professor, who translated things like "carne salada" (which actually means "salt beef" or "beef jerky") as "salad meat". Other than that, though, class was long and kind of tedious. We headed home and Lauren and I decided to introduce Elizabeth to empanadas, so we ordered some for dinner before watching a movie and going to sleep.

On Friday, we went grocery shopping and then spent the day cooking. We made meatballs, apple pie, and a chicken and pasta dish, and we had Lis over for dinner with us. After dinner, we got ready and headed out to the DiTella girls' apartment to hang out for a bit before we all headed out to Kika to go clubbing. I danced with one guy for a while who turned out to be really sketchy, but other than that it was fun. We stayed out til about four or five before we called it a night. The next morning, we were still too tired to do much, so we bummed around all day. Elizabeth and I eventually made it to the Botanical Gardens to walk around and explore for a bit, which was nice. We got back and made dinner, ordered a movie and Modena delivery, and had a lazy girls night since none of us were feeling up to going out again.

The next day, Lauren, Elizabeth, and I headed out to Recoleta for the day. We spent a few hours at the Recoleta fair buying presents for everyone back home, and wandered through the cemetery for a while as well. We got lunch at a tiny restaurant nearby, stopped at McDonalds for McFlurries, and went to see Angels and Demons that afternoon. After that we called it a day and went home. On Monday, Elizabeth and I went to La Boca for some more exploring and shopping. She got to see the Boca stadium and a few random tango performers in the street, and then we went back home for a few hours. I took her to Dada for dinner and dessert, both of which were awesome.

On Tuesday, I went to class in the morning and then headed back to the apartment, since my evening class was canceled. Elizabeth and I had lunch and then spent the afternoon wandering through Palermo. We found a really pretty park and sat next to the pond for a few hours and talked. It was so exciting to have someone from home to talk to- that might have been my favorite part of her visit. On our way back, we ran some errands, and got back to the apartment only to find that Roxana was still cleaning. We ended up sitting in the backyard eating Modena until she left. At that point, we decided to make banana bread and ordered sushi (and teryaki chicken for Elizabeth, since she wasn't a fan of the sushi) for dinner with Lauren. After dinner, we watched a movie that Lauren was assigned for her Cine class, which ended up being terrible.

Since I didn't have class until 4 on Wednesday, we slept late and made lunch before we headed out. In class, we had cake for Anne's birthday, and then afterwards we said bye to everyone and went to a little cafe for dinner, carrying all of our luggage with us. The cafe ended up having great food and our waiter was really nice and really attentive, so it ended up being a good sendoff. I made Elizabeth try the steak, since I figured it would be a crime if she left without having it. After dinner, I took Elizabeth to Sei Tu for one last hurrah with Argentine ice cream before we got a cab to the airport. I practically had to order her to get on the plane, which was sad, but at least I know she really did enjoy her time here if she didn't want to leave. I went home and watched another weird Argentine movie with Lauren and Joe before going to bed.

On Thursday, I woke up feeling horrible and skipped my classes. I spent most of the day catching up on my homework and my reading, so the day wasn't a complete waste. That night was Anne's birthday celebration, which included dinner, a bar, a party bus, another bar, and a nightclub. Since I was still feeling like death, I only made it as far as dinner, but it was still fun. Since I was also planning on going to Mar del Plata on the BC trip the next day, I figured getting some sleep was a better plan if I ever wanted to be healthy again. That didn't work out so well, since I had still not slept for more than an hour before it was time to get up for Mar del Plata, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I still felt horrible that morning, and decided to skip the trip, which was disappointing but necessary. Friday ended up being a recover-from-being-sick day and not much else, but was probably better for my health (unfortunately) than spending hours on a bus with no sleep and then partying all weekend.

Saturday was spent doing homework all day, and then Joe, Lauren and I met up with Anne, Robin, Lis, and Memo for dinner at a supposedly fantastic restaurant called Cumana. My dinner was actually pretty terrible, which was disappointing, but we met up with Kela after dinner and went to see "Los fantasmas de mis ex" (which translates directly to "The ghosts of my ex-girlfriends", but considering how bad some of the Spanish movie titles are, I have no idea what the movie is called in English). The movie had some funny moments and was entertaining, but wasn't that great. By the time we got home, it was almost 2am, so we went straight to bed. Today was spent working on my final papers, catching up on reading, and trying to recover from the awful cough that is currently controlling my life.

Modena fiascos and Mendoza

After skyping for several hours on the 24th, I got all of my visitors' trips planned. Afterwards, Lauren, Joe and I started cooking, because Ben and Kela were coming over for Ben's Mexican birthday dinner. The five of us had an awesome meal and then sat around and watched Emperor's New Groove, which of course I was really excited about. By the time the movie ended it had gotten pretty late, so we called it a night.

Monday was a holiday, which was kind of a waste since I didn't have classes anyway. The only way it affected us was that basically everything was closed. I spent the day getting the rest of my homework out of the way so I could start working on my huge presentation for my Cuentos class (the presentation that counts for 20% of my grade, is an hour and forty minutes of me speaking Spanish, and being graded by the awful professor who hates international students and fails us more often than not. No pressure.) That night, we all needed a break (my research was turning up conflicting information and I was ready to tear my hair out) so the three of us decided to go to Modena for an ice cream break. We then headed home with our quarter kilos of ice cream and got back to the apartment, only to discover that Joe did not have his key in his pocket as he had thought. We had locked all three of our keys inside the apartment, which has no other key. After explaining to security what happened and trying unsuccessfully to pick the lock, we tried to call a locksmith. We found out that we would have to pay them double to come out at night, and double again to come out on a holiday, so when our new favorite security guard, Daniel, suggested that a friend of his might be able to help us out, we jumped on it.
We waited around for maybe three hours for his friend to show up, during which time Joe left to go to a party, and Lauren and I wandered the streets singing the Jonas Brothers, sat in Modena and flirted with the cute waiters, and sat creepily in the dark on the floor of our hallway. Finally the friend showed up, got our door open in less than a second, and hopped back in the elevator before the doors closed or we could offer to pay him. The rest of the night was spent frantically trying to finish my presentation and praying that I would not fall asleep in the middle of it.

On Tuesday, after about two hours of sleep, I got up early to finish the presentation, and headed to school. The presentation went fairly well- I think I was slightly delirious and my Spanish seems to flow better when I'm tired. Other than the fact that the professor kept interrupting and going off on tangents that I didn't want to discuss (she wanted us to teach her class- just let us teach it!) it went okay. After that, I went to run a million errands, trying to pick up my transcript at UBA, picking up my student visa, picking up my package from home, and bringing it all back to the apartment. The package was amazing- bagels, pepperoni, candy, an oven thermometer so we could actually cook, and about a million other things that made my day. As I was enjoying my surprises, Roxana (our maid) showed up to clean, so I had to head back to UCA and get out of her way. After a long, boring class, I came home and Lauren and I ran to the grocery store to buy cream cheese, before we each polished off about three bagels for dinner. Easily the best meal I've eaten here. After that I went to bed for some much-needed sleep.

Wednesday was a lazy day, thank god. We hung around until class time, which was at the Evita museum near our house and only lasted an hour. We picked up some groceries on the way home as well as a present for Daniel, our security guard, and made pepperoni pizza for dinner, which was amazing. After that, we sat down to do homework, watched some TV, and went to bed.

On Thursday, I went to Cuentos as usual, and headed home right after. The subte broke down halfway there, and I ended up having to walk maybe 35 blocks to get home, but since I didn't really have anywhere to be I couldn't complain too much. Once i got home, I made lunch, washed practically every dish in the house, did some hw, cleaned the room, took a shower, packed, and ate dinner. Then I headed out to the bus station to meet up with Lis and Robin to go to Mendoza. We had free entertainment listening to the two incredibly spoiled girls sitting in front of us- some of the things that came out of their mouths shocked us, and we go to a school full of spoiled rich kids. Our bus attendant, Matias, was really cute, and brought us candies and organized a huge game of Bingo for the entire bus. I tied for first place with another passenger, so we drew numbers to determine a winner. I lost, which was kind of upsetting once we realized the prize was a free bottle of wine. However, it was still fun. After an awful dinner and a terrible movie, we took our super-uncomfortable pillows and settled in for the night.

The bus crew woke us up far too early on Friday with bad nineties music videos on the TV and breakfast. The breakfast, at least, was decent, and we arrived in Mendoza shortly after that. We checked into our hostel, which was cute and clean although the walls were really thin and the rooms were definitely on the small side. It was rainy and freezing all day, so we found a restaurant called Giovanni's to have lunch- unfortunately, most of it was inedible it was so bad. We picked up hot chocolate mix at the grocery store to make us feel better, and went back to the hostel for hot chocolate and homework, since our other options were limited. We had a mediocre dinner at a different restaurant, and wandered through a local craft fair on our way home. We tried to go to bed early since we had signed up for an early excursion the next morning, but we could hear everything through the walls and didn't get much sleep.

On Saturday, we got up far too early and headed out in a bus with maybe ten other people for the Alta Montana excursion. It was freezing cold, snowy, and gorgeous. We drove for a few hours into the Andes before stopping at a little cafe for breakfast, and then stopped to take pictures at a few of the lakes and the Puente de los Incas, a natural bridge formed by glaciers and hot springs in a long complicated process that I can't explain. We saw some ruins from a distance and picked up a few things at an artisan fair in the mountains, but hopped back on the bus asap because it was so cold. We made friends with a girl teaching Spanish in Cordoba, a junior at MIT who was traveling with his whole family, and a group of girls from Brazil. After a long bus ride back, we said our goodbyes, and then Lis, Robin, and I went out to dinner (this time we asked for a recommendation from Joe, who had been to Mendoza before- we were getting really sick of crappy food). Fortunately his recommendation was good, and we finally got our good dinner with a bottle of wine. We made friends with three Spanish men, who were traveling South America on an extended vacation, and gave us some good travel tips on their favorite parts. After that, we wandered home and went to sleep.

On Sunday, (last day of May- wow!) we woke up and FINALLY had the beautiful weather we had been hoping for. We set off in search of the bike tours that they offer through the various bodegas (aka wineries/vineyards), only to discover that they are all closed on Sundays and we had missed our chance. After navigating the local bus system successfully, we found one place that was still open, rented bikes from a sketchy roadside vendor, and set off in search of it, accompanied by a stray dog with one eye that had developed an attachment to us. We ended up traveling most of the way with three boys, two from the US and one from England, who were doing the same thing we were. They named the dog Benny despite the fact that Benny was a she, but we think she learned it so quickly because "veni" (pronounced "Benny") means "come here" in Spanish. Just a theory. The six of us biked for what felt like hours down the main road of the town, passing various vineyards and getting some awesome pictures. Benny stayed with us the entire way, bouncing back and forth between our two groups. We finally got to the bodega and signed up for the tour, which we took while the owners tried to convince Benny to leave. We learned a bunch of things about how wine is made and stored, and what differentiates different wines in terms of quality, color, and taste, and then went into the house for our wine tasting. We got to try three or four different wines (including Octans, a wine invented by the owners of the Bodega that's a mix of red and white and is only sold there) before we headed out. A cop showed up as we were leaving and warned us not to leave the main road, because a lot of criminals lie in wait off the main road for tourists on bikes, who are generally easy targets for robbery. We ended up getting a police escort all the way back home, accompanied by Benny, who we defended from the various dogs that tried to attack her along they way. Once we got back to the bike rental place and returned our bikes, the boys and I were starving, so we all grabbed empanadas at a local cafe. Probably more than half of the empanadas went straight to Benny, since we felt bad that she had chased us all day and had not eaten anything. After that, we all hopped a bus back to Mendoza and went our separate ways from there. The girls and I stopped at a restaurant for dinner on our way back, and then went back to pack up our stuff. We got ice cream on the way to the bus and settled in for another long ride. Dinner was equally bad as the first time around, but the movie was better, as were the pillows. We were at the front of the bus by the huge windows, and froze all night, but we got back to BsAs safely and took the train home to Palermo.

I got home on Monday morning around 12, and spent the day bumming around with Lauren since I was exhausted and she didn't feel good. We ordered ice cream and sushi, watched a movie with Joseph, did some homework, and skyped our respective families before going to bed. Tuesday was equally uneventful, with class, homework, lunch, homework, and more class. It was, however, the two-month mark of my remaining time here. Kind of weird- I don't really know how to feel about that.

Fun stuff and hell week

Fortunately my life has gotten a little more interesting recently, so I actually have at least a few things to write about. Tuesday was uneventful (they tend to be with class from 10am-9pm), so other than class I don't think there was really anything noteworthy. On Wednesday, after our normal morning errands (paying rent, going to the gym, making lunch, stopping at the grocery store) Lauren and I went to a cafe near UBA to kill time before class. At the cafe, she went to use the bathroom, only to find that there were two unmarked bathrooms. After walking into the first one and seeing a row of urinals, she decided she was in the wrong one, and headed into what was evidently the girls bathroom. All of the lights were off, but when she walked in and turned them on, she discovered that there was a man sitting in one of the stalls, minus his pants, laughing maniacally in the dark with the stall door open. Needless to say, she got out of there as fast as she could, only to discover when he came out of the bathroom that he had another table very close to ours, in the deserted second floor of the restaurant. At that point we ate and got the check as quickly as we could and escaped minus the perverted bathroom laugher.

After that unusual experience, I headed to class for an hour, and ducked out early for our presentation from Habitat for Humanity- Argentina. Pretty much our entire group decided to volunteer, and we're still waiting on our placement, but I think that it'll be a good experience. After the presentation, we had history class as usual and then went out for burritos. I met up with Lauren and the DiTella girls afterwards, and we all went to the movies to see 17 Again, which was entertaining even though it wasn't the greatest movie I've ever seen. Lauren and I went to the gym after we got home, watched some TV and did our homework, and went to bed.

Thursday was a repeat of Tuesday- I should really stop including them in here. Nothing ever happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Friday was a productive day, thankfully- gym, grocery shopping, homework, class, party planning, and laundry. That night, about 15 of us went to a restaurant near our house for Ben's 21st birthday dinner. The food was not as good as we had hoped but the birthday boy had a good time at the very least. After dinner, we all came back to my apartment building, where Joe, Lauren, and I had rented the salon (an empty floor in our building designed for parties and such) and started the party. We had cake and ice cream, of course, and a ton of people showed up. Overall the party was a lot of fun and I think everyone there had a great time.
We kicked everyone out at about 3am (the latest you can reserve the room until) and Lauren and I cleaned up the mess that was left since Joe had mysteriously disappeared. We found out when we got back to our apartment that he had left the party in the middle, come upstairs, and passed out on his bed, fully clothed and with all the lights on. It seems to be a habit of his.

On Saturday, Lis and I waited all day to hear from Amanda, who supposedly got into town on Thursday and had yet to call us/respond to our frantic facebook messages asking if she was alive. I spent most of the day doing homework and killing time, until finally Lis called to let me know that she had heard from Amanda and that we were all meeting at Lis's house at 7. After rushing around to get ready (it was almost 6:30 by this point) I made it to Lis's at 7. We sent everyone on ahead to a restaurant for drinks and told them we would catch up with them when Amanda arrived. After an hour and a half of waiting, Amanda finally showed up with all of her friends from Chile, who were really nice. We took them out to a Mexican restaurant nearby (apparently they can't get their hands on Mexican food in Chile) and had dinner, but Joe and I both started feeling sick towards the end and had to duck out early to run home. We told Amanda to call us the next day to hang out as well as next weekend, when her group would be back in town for their return trip to Chile.

On Sunday, I waited around all day to hear from her, and did homework for a while. Stayed in that night with Joe, who had gotten some bad news about one of his cousins and needed the company.

Monday, Joe, Lauren and I were still all feeling sick, so we stayed in for most of the day and watched tv/did homework. Lauren and I made one excursion to go pick up her concert tickets and change my flight home to two weeks earlier- neither of which was successful. That night I worked on my creative project for my class with the awful professor and went to bed.

The only relevant thing that happened on Tuesday was that I skipped out on my last class an hour early. After listening to my professor explain to us what an introductory paragraph, thesis statement, and conclusion were for two hours, I figured my time would be better spent studying for my three exams in the next two days. Spent the remainder of the night studying, which I think ended up being a good call on my part.

Wednesday was final exam part one for my UBA class, which wasn't too bad. History class was the same as always, except that a few of the BC kids had friends from home visiting. Adrian's friend basically monopolized the entire class discussion, which was a little weird considering that he obviously didn't do the reading or know anything about the topic. Wednesday night was spent doing another project for my dreaded Cuentos class.

Thursday involved turning in a project in my first class, taking the second half of my final in my second class (the speaking portion- normally I bomb the speaking parts, but I got a perfect score!) and taking a midterm in my third class. Basically I was just excited to have survived that day.

Friday, I headed out to UBA for my last class and to get my grades (an A- too bad I don't get credit for it and took it pass/fail). I then walked the 25ish blocks to the post office to pick up the package that my mom mailed me almost two months ago. I'm almost afraid to open it, because there's food in there that definitely would not keep for two months. Once I got there, they told me that my passport number and multiple forms of photo ID were not good enough and that I would have to come back with my actual passport to get my package. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled. Came home and got sushi with Lauren and Joe for dinner, which I hadn't tried in years but really liked. Will definitely be ordering it again. We also rented a movie, and Lauren and I stayed in and watched it while Joe went to a party for a friend of his.

That morning, Joe got home at 645 and proceeded to turn his music up all the way, turn the tv up all the way, slammed every door in the house multiple times, slammed dishes around in the sink, and ignored us when we yelled at him to please be a little quieter. Since it was fairly obvious that he was drunk and angry, we decided to stay in bed and just wait it out instead of confronting him. After 45 minutes of angry slamming and full volume confusion, he finally went to bed and we managed to go back to sleep.

When we got up a few hours later, we discovered that he had left the freezer open all night, and that there was a flood of water all over our kitchen floor and all of our food had defrosted. We cleaned it up and resisted the urge to blast our music and wake him up, and went to the gym instead to remove the temptation. That day, he didn't say a word to us, and we obviously were annoyed enough to not want to speak to him either. Lauren and I went to the grocery store, printed some school stuff out at a locutorio, and basically avoided the issue for a while since we were still so angry and didn't know what we did to provoke him.

I did homework for a while, and that night Lauren and I went over to Memo's to meet up with everyone to watch the Lakers-Nuggets game and hang out. Joe ended up showing up, and made Lauren and I leave the party to discuss what had happened. Timing could have been better, since we missed the majority of the game and the party, but whatever. We all had a screaming match and got everything out in the open, and finally resolved things for the most part, although I'm still annoyed. After we finally got that dramatic mess straightened out, we were able to go back to the party, which was basically ending by that point. We all headed out to a bar to hang out for a while and headed home around three.

Today is designated homework/blogging/Skype dates to figure out travel plans day. Beanie and Elizabeth are each coming to see me, which is really exciting :)

Attempt number two to post this entry- if it gets deleted again, I'm giving up.

I don't remember anything at all about Tuesday the 28th, other than that I know I went to classes and studied a ton. Wednesday was my first real midterm, in my BC Argentine history course. Basically studied all day for that, took the exam and am pretty sure that I did at least okay. Afterwards, my BC crew all scattered to our respective houses for dinner, and then Lauren, Joe and I met up with the DiTella kids at TGIFridays for drinks/appetizers/deserts. Although we had a few food fiascos (the fruit drinks all tasted like the wrong fruits; Argentines apparently consider barbecue sauce to be the same thing as hot sauce; we still don't know WHAT kind of cheese they put on their potato skins, but we strongly suspect it's CheezeWhiz) we had a good time- it was a good way to de-stress after the exam. I headed home early to watch a movie for my class in the morning, and went to bed afterwards.

On Thursday, I woke up early and headed out to my 10am class as usual (which, keep in mind, involves a 5-10 minute walk to the subte, a 30-45 minute subte ride, and a 15-20 minute walk to school). When I got there, my class discovered that my teacher failed to show up AGAIN and couldn't be bothered to send us and email to let us know AGAIN. Mind you, this is the crazy psychotic one who takes five points off our final grade every time we're late, ten points off for every unexcused abscence, and emails us almost every day to yell at us for one thing or another. (Side note: we thought it was a half a point per tardy and one point per absence- unfortunately, she meant on a ten-point scale). Since I then had four hours until my next class (too much time to hang out and do nothing, but not enough time to go home and back) I went to the computer lab and caught up on emails/tax forms/homework downloads for several hours. I hate how dependent my life is on an internet connection.
After classes were over, my entire BC crew went to a birthday party for one of John and Mickey's roommates. It was a lot of fun- the party was on the roof/balcony of this house in the middle of the city and it was packed with about a million people. There were quite a few people who were way too drunk for their own good, but it was really entertaining and we all made it home without any serious injuries. Some slight drama towards the end, as there tends to be with our group, but nothing too bad.

Friday was a feriado (Argentina's equivalent of Labor Day, as far as I can tell) so my class was canceled and I got to sleep late. I spent most of the day working on homework/procrastinating, and then went out to dinner that night with Joe and Lauren. We went to a restaurant called Il Gatto, which had amazing pictures of their food on their website but didn't live up to them in actuality. Overall the food was good but not amazing like we had hoped. After dinner we went to the movies and met up with the DiTella kids to go see "Tierra" (aka "Earth") which was really cool. I spent most of the movie wondering how they managed to film it, and hoping that the small animals they showed on screen wouldn't be eaten on camera.

Saturday was spent writing my midterm paper for my Premios Nobel class (which is the most boring out of all my classes, but surprisingly not my least favorite). I stayed in instead of going out with everyone and got to talk to Joshua for a few hours and catch up on all my TV shows, which was really nice. Sunday was laundry, homework, groceries, and studying, and Monday was just studying until my head felt like it was going to explode. Lauren and I broke our diet rule and went to Modena for ice cream, which was probably the best decision I made all weekend. It helped me hang on to my sanity for a few more hours, at any rate.

Tuesday was supposed to be my appointment for my student visa, which I had to move to Wednesday after my professor told my that she would fail me if I failed to show up for my midterm, even though the appointments are randomly assigned by the government and are not supposed to be changed under any circumstances. Her reply to my email was rude and completely unprofessional...I wonder if I could get her in trouble for that? At any rate, after battling with UCA and the visa department for days, I was able to get it switched, thanks to the awesome study abroad advisor Francisco.
That meant that I got to go take my final on Tuesday, which meant I woke up arounf 530 to study beforehand. Luckily the final didn't end up being as hard as I thought it would be, but was wayyy too long for the amount of time she gave us. You could feel the hate in the room after she handed out the tests- I kept looking up during class and seeing people glaring murderously at her, which was very amusing. I went to the rest of my classes and then went home, bringing Robin and Ben G with me to Joe's Cinco de Mayo party at our house. Joe made Mexican food for himself, Robin, Ben G, Steve, and Lis, and after they ate the DiTella girls came over for prebol and everyone (except me, and Ben G and Lis, who went home) went out to a boliche to celebrate. By the time everyone left to go out, it was after 230 in the morning, which was not the happiest realization, since I still had to shower, go to bed, and be awake by 5. Needless to say, I got no sleep, especially because I woke up to talk to Lauren when she got home around 4. Ooops.

Wednesday was visa day, so Joe and I got up superearly (correction: I got up superearly, and dragged Joe's butt out of bed five minutes before we had to leave) and went to the visa place for 730. Luckily, we were done with everything by nine, which was awesome because most of the other kids had to stay for seven or eight hours. We went home and I got to take a quick nap before having lunch and heading out to class. Unfortunately, we had a bus tour instead of our 4pm history class, which was unbelievably boring and went an hour over class time. We all also were trying to nap on the bus had it not been for the incessant chattering of a certain person.

Thursday was another miserably long day of class, and a sad day for me because Lauren left for Peru for four days. Clearly not okay. On Friday, I had to wake up early to go to a mandatory make-up class for the class that my professor didn't show up for. Why WE had to make up a class that SHE missed, I'll never know. I'll add it to the list of reasons why I hate her. That night, Joe, Lis, Robin, Anne, and I went over to Joanna's apartment, and she made AWESOME Mexcian enchiladas for us and Adrian and Mickey. We all hung out there for a while, which was fun, and then I headed out early to meet up with my UBA friends at Sugar, a bar near my house. We were there until 3 or 4 in the morning, and had an awesome time. This was our first time hanging out outside of class, and we decided to definitely do it more often. One of the perks of hanging out with them is that it forces me to use my Spanish. Since we're all from different countries, Spanish is really the only common language we all have, which is kind of cool. Apparently mine has improved more than I thought, because I had a number of people tell me that I spoke really well. I made friends with a drunk guy from Indiana, who picks up a British accent when he drinks, and I met a couple girls from England, a few from the States, and a couple of German guys. Altogether a good experience- plus, my friend Jordana introduced me to the owners of the bar, and if they remember me next time I won't have to pay the entrance fee.

On Saturday, I did some homework and finally joined the gym. I went with the girls and Joe for a little bit, and then met up with Lis and Robin later that day to go to the Museo de Bellas Artes. It was smaller than I expected, but they had some really cool pieces. They also had some that made me question their taste in art (a piece of brown canvas with a slash in it? Really?) but it was cool to wander around and see everything. We went out to Hard Rock Cafe after the museum and then went back to their place to watch movies and have a much needed (for me, anyways) girls night.

Sunday and Monday (today!!) are dedicated to homework and organizing the disaster area that is my room right now. I also got to talk to Beanie yesterday and get some dates nailed down for when she comes to visit me, which was exciting. Supposedly I also have a skype date with the Vaillancourts tonight, which makes me really happy- I can't wait to talk them and hear all their crazy stories.

Also, another round of postcards went out a few days ago, so if you've requested one and haven't gotten it yet, keep an eye out!

The week of homework and procrastination

On Monday morning, I woke up really early and met up with Anne, Robin, Ben, and Emily to get our student visas, which was a lot of waiting around and getting shuffled from one department to another. I realized that my Spanish is definitely improving, though- if I had had to do that alone on my first day here, I would have been completely lost. The rest of the day was spent doing homework, grocery shopping, and other non-exciting things like that. Tuesday was more of the same- got up early to pick up our visas to turn in to UCA, then homework, class, etc., as was most of Wednesday. Wednesday was exciting only because Lauren and I made delicious Mexican food for dinner, and I got to talk to Beanie for the first time in forever.

Thursday was also more of the same, but when I got home, Lauren had made me dinner and bought me flowers and candy for our last night without Joe being home (not that we weren't happy when he came back, of course), which was really awesome. Afterwards Kela, Ben, and Jessie came over for a Disney movie marathon. We watched Aladdin, then Steve came over for the second half and we all watched Hercules. Basically we're all huge dorks and I love it.

Friday was boring day number 423535 for the week- homework, grocery shopping (I feel like we live at our grocery store sometimes), food, bed. Ditto for Saturday, until we all went out for Joe's 21st birthday. We went to a Mexican restaurant nearby called Cielito Lindo, which had awesome margaritas and really good food. We hung out there for a while and then went to a bar nearby in Plaza Serrano for a few hours, which was also really fun. Overall a very successful event.

Sunday and Monday were both homework and such all day, and also catching up on blogging (clearly) and some of my tv shows. Clearly my life is not as exciting now that midterms are around the corner. Hopefully once they're over I'll have better stories :)

Tuesday was the first day back in the real world. Class, attempt number two to register officially with UCA (successful this time, thank god), homework in the park, class, homework, class. After my 6-9 class got out, I met up with Lauren, Joe, and Joe's family, and they took us out to dinner at the same restaurant we went to on our first night in Buenos Aires, which was delicious and a lot of fun. Lauren and I headed back afterwards to do homework and went to bed.

Wednesday, our designated productive day, we went grocery shopping and had breakfast/did homework until I left for class. Our BC class that afternoon was a field trip around Retiro and Recoleta, which was right around where I used to live but still really interesting. Afterwards I came home, made dinner by myself since Lauren was at our friend Danni's and Joe took off for a week to travel with his grandparents, had a skype date with Josh and did some homework before going to bed.

Thursday was slightly more interesting. Started off with class/homework/class/homework/class (the two hour blocks in the middle are killer- I start at 10am and I'm not done til 9pm) as always, and then headed back home for dinner. After that, we went over to the girls' apartment to celebrate Ali's birthday. We hung out at the apartment for a while, had wine and birthday cake and other birthdayish things, and then we went out to a really cool bar called Post for a few hours. At that point most of us were exhausted and went home, but the boys headed out to a boliche without us (after much convincing that yes, they could actually handle going to a boliche without our presence. I swear, the boys here are such wimps.)

On Friday we slept late, had breakfast/homework/lunch/class/homework/dinner, then our friend Kela came over and we all got ready to go out. We met up with everyone at a bar nearby called Sugar, and hung out there for the rest of the night, which was pretty low-key but a lot of fun.

On Saturday, we went grocery shopping (AGAIN) and did homework all day. That night we went to the DiTella boys' apartment for their friend's birthday party. Their apartment is crazy- literally two steps from the door is an in-ground indoor pool, and their entire apartment has no walls. They have curtains hung up to divide the rooms, and in addition to a staircase to get to the second story, they have a ladder and a fire pole off the second floor landing. Basically the craziest apartment I've ever seen in my life- I have no idea how it passed building codes. (Does Argentina even have building codes?) The party was a lot of fun, and it was a good mix of meeting new people versus hanging out with my friends. Overall a really good night. We left kind of early, maybe around three, and headed home because we had to get up early the next day.

Sunday was the day of the Boca-River Superclascio game, which is arguably one of the biggest sporting events of one of the biggest rivalries in the world. We somehow managed to get tickets through a guy that works with one of the study abroad programs, so Lauren and I got up early and went to meet Ben and Kela to go to the game. We met up with the guy and the 15 other kids going to the game, and they drove us to the drop off point. Once we got there things got really sketchy. Basically at these games, each side brings a massive flag that stretches from the top of the stadium, over the heads of all the fans on all three tiers of the stadium, down to the ground. They let it down before the game starts to show their colors and then the fans pass it back up for the start of the game. When we got to the outside of the stadium, all of the members of the Boca Juniors Club were lined up on the sidewalk with the flag rolled up on their shoulders. The line literally stretched as far as we could see in either direction. At that point, our guy told us to jump in the line without getting caught and pretend we were members. Our $350 pesos per person had apparently gone to bribing the guy regulating the line to sneak us in instead of towards actual tickets. The first half of our group, (me, Lauren, Ben, Kela, and maybe five others) jumped in line, got literally thrown onto the street when we got caught, and snuck back into line in between some very angry looking Boca Juniors club members. We were instructed to not let go of the flag FOR ANY REASON or we would either a) not be able to get into the game, or b) be trampled to death. We started walking when the line started moving, and the hundreds of people towards the back of the line got impatient. They proceeded to start a stampede and brought the back end of the flag up to the front. Unfortunately, this meant that everyone was trapped in the loop of the flag when it doubled up in the middle. At one point, I was pinned between four or five people and was being carried along without my feet touching the ground, and at another point I was pinned to the wall with the flag wrapped around my neck completely unable to breathe. It was complete madness. Kela and Lauren lost their hold on the flag, were knocked down to the ground, and were trampled by a good portion of the crowd before they were able to get back up. We all actually thought for a few minutes that we were going to die, but fortunately we all made it into the stadium in one piece. Of course, at that point we realized that we didn't have actual seats (the game sold out the second day that tickets were available. That was several months ago.)

Once inside and not in fear of our lives, we grabbed something to eat and then enjoyed the opening ceremonies. They were insane- confetti and balloons everywhere, fireworks, firecrackers, blue and yellow smoke, yelling and screaming, everything. Once the actual game started, the fans calmed down, which was a bit of a disappointment since they're supposed to be the craziest fans in the world. Honestly I thought BC fans were crazier than they were, but the game was still a lot of fun.

After the game (which was also freezing, by the way- we were all wearing t-shirts and froze because the temperature unexpectedly dropped like 20 degrees) we went home and spent the rest of the night making dinner/doing homework/trying to be warm. Overall a terrifying/fun/cold/good day.

Chile- progressively downhill after Pucon

Friday was our last morning in Pucon. I said goodbye to my amazing bed, and we headed out to a cafe for breakfast before hopping on the bus to go to Valdivia. After a relatively short ride, we arrived, only to discover that there is nothing to do in Valdivia. Kind of disappointing, especially because Pucon was so amazing, but we made do. We found a restaurant by the water and sat down to eat at around 12. The service was SO SLOW that we didn't make it out of there until almost 4:30, in spite of the fact that we ordered quickly and asked for the check as soon as the food arrived. After we escaped from the clutches of our evil waitress, we wandered through the local craft fair and fish market, and watched the sea lions lie around and fight with each other for a while. Later on in the afternoon, we got some vary disappointing ice cream and decided to just pick up some groceries for dinner later instead of going out. After the grocery store, we went back to the hostel and played with their pet duck. We also tried to play with the pet rabbit, but the duck got super aggressive and attacked us whenever we got near his friend. Cute, in an odd kind of way. The rest of the night was spent watching Garden State and eating our grocery-store dinner: bread, cheese, grapes and wine. I was a little jealous when the other kids in the hostel cooked up a five-star dinner that smelled amazing, but then we found out that they're all in their thirties and have been cooking for themselves for a while already. After that I didn't feel so bad about our lack of culinary abilities.

Saturday, after breakfast at the hostel and racking our brains about what to do all day, we decided to explore the island across the river and walked to a park there, only to realize that there was an admission fee for what looked like a jungle gym and some grass. We decided that our $500 pesos was better spent on hot chocolate and coffee, so we made friends with an adorable old guy in a cafe and then set off in search of the German brewery nearby to take a tour. Once at the brewery, we had some beer and decided the tour was not worth the entrance fee, so we went in search of a restaurant, since Catherine didn't like the vegetarian options at the brewery. The restaurant we found was essentially terrible- awful food, terrible service, and they miscalculated our bill by several thousand pesos, which we immediately threw a fit about and got fixed. We picked up some groceries again and went back to the hostel to do our homework, since we had officially exhausted all of our options for things to do in Valdivia. We had dinner and went back to the grocery store to raid their bakery counter for delicious cakes, watched a bootleg copy of Slumdog Millionaire, and went to bed.

Easter Sunday, we woke up for breakfast (the hostel owners gave us chocolate eggs with our breakfast for Easter) and got on the bus to Santiago. I insisted on stocking up on groceries before we left, so we'd have something to eat on the bus, even though an eleven hour bus ride should include two meals and several movies according to our previous experiences on South American bus lines.

Fourteen hours later, we had still not been fed, (and had already gone through all the food we brought) had not been shown any movies, and had to deal with the smell of the bus bathroom for the last six hours because they ran out of toilet paper halfway through and then clogged the toilet. Overall a miserable experience, and if I hadn't had so many good ones, I would have sworn off the bus system forever. However, I think I can limit myself to saying I will never go on the Chilean bus lines again.
When we FINALLY got to Santiago, we piled into a cab to go to our next hostel, which is run by a tiny little old man named Oscar. The sign on his office door literally said: "If you need something and there is no one in the office, look for the old man. His name is Oscar, and he lives in the violet room." He was really cute and gave us advice on where to grab food at 12:30 in the morning, since we were starving. The only place open in the immediate vicinity was a gas station/fast food place, which had absolutely terrible food that, at the time, was delicious. After wolfing down our food in two minutes or less, we went back to the hostel and went to sleep.

Monday was our last day in Chile, and involved breakfast, a cab, lunch at "Gatsby's Airport Cafe", the flight to BsAs, and getting ripped off by our cab driver on the way home. Great welcome back to the city. When I got home, I discovered that Lauren had been trying to install our internet modem (supposed to be installed by professionals while we were gone, mind you) for hours. After harassing the tech guys multiple times, she finally got it working, only to discover that it was not wireless as promised, but a single connection. At this point, we were ready to throw our realtor off a cliff, so we took a break and met up with the girls to go to an empanada place for dinner. Fortunately those improved our mood enough to get us through a few hours of hw before we crashed.

Chile, parte dos- Pucon and its amazingness

Wednesday morning, we checked into our hostel, El Refugio, which was definitely my favorite hostel out of all the ones I've been to. It was log-cabin style, with the whole inside of the house done in natural wood with a woodstove in the living room to heat the house. My bed was a top bunk tucked up in the eaves of one of the bedrooms and was the coziest most comfortable bed I've ever slept in. After we briefly explored and fell in love with the hostel, we all went to get breakfast (for BC readers- at the Agora Cafe. Not kidding.) When it came time to decide what to do for the day, we were slightly overwhelmed, because there were so many options.

The town, Pucon, is tiny- you can walk from end to end in about fifteen minutes. It's in this valley, next to a gorgeous lake on one side and an ACTIVE VOLCANO on the other, which was really cool. The volcano smokes every day and glows red at the top at night, which was really cool to see. One of our choices for excursions was to take an all-day hike that goes right up to the rim of the volcano and includes climbing the ice at the top with ice picks and full gear. Unfortunately, it was also $75 a person, so we decided that we should probably go for the cheaper options so we could do more than one without going broke. Our other options were canopying, kayaking, bodysurfing down the river, horseback riding, visiting the hot springs, and a few other things that are escaping me at the moment. Robin, Ali, and I decided to try horseback riding (it was one of the few that still had spots available that late in the day) but Catherine and Lis decided to stay in town and entertain themselves for the day instead.

After Robin, Ali and I grabbed lunch (and by lunch I mean a hamburger that was LITERALLY bigger than my entire head- I think I ate less than a quarter of it) and befriended a stray dog that looked like Wishbone minus the spots, we went back to the hostel to wait for the horseback riding people. Although much of what followed would be super sketchy in the States, we went with it and fortunately survived.

This random guy (who later introduced himself as Rodolfo) showed up in a beat-up old car with his dog and told us to get in, which we did, and proceeded to drive us into the mountains for about an hour. The view was gorgeous the entire way, and he told us we would have to stop at his house to pick up his riding gear. His house was beauuuuutiful and perched on the side of a mountain with nothing even remotely close to it and the most amazing view ever. He also had about six dogs running around that we got to play with while he got ready, and then we met up with a young couple who were also going to be our guides on the horseback riding trip. They were adorable- Gustavo was gorgeous and really nice (and from Buenos Aires, coincidentally, which explained why he was goodlooking- Chilean men can't touch Argentine men in the looks department) and Francisca/Francheska (I didn't catch her name when she introduced herself but it was something along those lines) was amazing and really friendly. We all went to the barn, played with the kittens and the dogs there, got our horses, and set off into the mountains with no gear, no instructions, and no helmets. Definitely would not work that way in the US but I kind of liked it.

My horse was the old slow one (which I think they assigned to me because I had never been riding before) and I named him Old Fart because in addition to being miles behind everyone else at times, he was a gas machine. Robin's horse would stop every two seconds to eat any type of vegetation he could reach, and would go off the path randomly, but other than that we did amazingly. We basically rode for five hours up this mountain on trails that were barely wide enough for a person to stand on, never mind a horse, and were hanging off the edge of the mountain at some points. Pretty much the coolest thing I've ever done in my life. After coming back down off the mountain and saying a semi-affectionate, semi-annoyed goodbye to Old Fart, we went back to Rodolfo's house for drinks and such. We hung out there for about an hour looking at Rodolfo's rodeo pictures (he's apparently one of the best rodeo competitors in Chile) and getting a ton of insider information on Pucon from Francisca. Gustavo and Francisca drove us back home later on and we met back up with Catherine and Lis for dinner. We went to a really cool vegetarian restaurant called Ecole for dinner and then rushed back to the hostel to get as much sleep time in our awesome beds as possible. Our roommate, Ron, who was from Israel, could not believe we were going to bed at 10 or 11 at night, but the beds actually were that amazing.

The next day, we grabbed breakfast at another cafe and bought a bunch of lunch supplies at the grocery store before heading off on a random hike our hostel had suggested. Catherine basically booked it up the mountain while the rest of us tried desperately to keep up without killing ourselves, (the horseback riding muscles were not happy with us) and then we had to slide from tree trunk to tree trunk down the side of a nearly vertical incline to reach the bottom of the waterfall we were trying to get to. The falls were beautiful but too cold to swim in, so we climbed back up and had a picnic lunch and befriended a wild horse while we were at it. We hiked back to town and decided to go to the lake, which had black sand beaches from the volcanic rock that were really odd to look at. We went in the water very briefly (lakes in the mountains of Chile= freezing) and got drinks at a bar on the beach.

That night, the girls and I (minus Catherine, who wasn't feeling well) decided to go to the hot springs up in the mountains for a few hours before dinner, which were really cool but not what I expected. A hotel had built three different pools around the ones we went to, so it looked more like an outdoor spa than a natural mountain spring, but it was fun nevertheless. We headed home after a while and went to try Peruvian food, which Francisca had told us was amazing and easily the best restaurant in town, but Catherine vetoed the rest of us and we ended up going to a seafood/pasta restaurant instead before going back and jumping in our beds for the last time.

So if you couldn't tell, Pucon was my favorite place that I've been to since being abroad. If you ever visit Chile, go there.
Also, why is no one answering my emails? Some of them are semi-important and need answering, but this seems to be the week to ignore Katie's questions. Let's fix that, people. Also, I miss you all, so it's nice to hear from you even if I didn't send you a mile-long list of queries. I hope everything is going well in the States/the random countries around the world that my friends are currently in!

Viaje a Chile, parte uno

So once again I fail at the updating game. To pick up where I left off, Thursday the 2nd was a feriado (aka school holiday with no classes) and Friday I had one class like I always do. Other than that, I have no idea what I did with myself for those two days. I do remember that Lauren and I were both not feeling well and we basically bummed around and did nothing. However, knowing us, there were visits to Modena involved. Modena is the ice cream place on the corner by our house- the staff all know Lauren and I by name, where we come from, what our favorite ice cream flavors are, and probably know what every single set of pajamas/sweatpants that we own look like. Needless to say, we've gained a lot of weight recently and are going on a diet that does NOT involve ice cream every day. (We have the "Empanada-Face Diet House Rules" posted on our fridge with terrible fat pictures of ourselves to prevent us from snacking).

On Saturday, I spent most of the day doing my own laundry for the first time- Joe discovered that we've had a laundry room in the basement of our building this whole time, go figure- and packing for Chile. Had a heated debate with boy on the phone in the middle of the night and then lay down for about two hours before it was Sunday morning and time to go to the airport.

Flying to Chile by myself was a fiasco start to finish. I couldn't look at my reservation or print my ticket because I still did not have internet, so I just showed up at the airport and took a stab at what I thought was my airline. After waiting in line for about an hour, I learned that I had chosen the wrong airline, and went on to guess #2. Mind you, at this point I have less than an hour to find my airline, get through security, find my gate, and board the plane. Fortunately, guess #2 was correct, and my flight was delayed so I got there in plenty of time.

Once I landed in Chile, I had no idea if the girls were meeting me at the airport, a random bus station, at their hostel, or somewhere else, and our cell phones don't work in Chile so I had no way of finding out. After wandering around the airport for a while, I made friends with a sketchy bus driver who drove me into Santiago and then forgot to tell me which stop to get off at. Also, let me just state that every single building along this road in Santiago looks like a bus station, so that was no help at all. Once he realized he had forgotten to tell me which stop, he got one of his bus-driver buddies to drive me back for free, and fortunately this one was much more helpful. General first impression of Chileans: super nice and extremely hospitable but a little spacey.

I eventually arrived at the bus station, and wandered around for a while longer until I finally spotted the girls getting out of a taxi. We immediately bought bus tickets for Valparaiso and headed off. Our hostel in Valpo was generally nice- awesome staff, cute puppy to play with, but the bathrooms were pretty gross so we avoided them at all costs. The girls (Lis, Robin, Aly, who is Robin's friend from home, and Catherine) and I wandered around and found a place for lunch. For about $5 I got a huge bowl literally filled with more seafood than I could eat in a week- no pasta or anything. Chilean seafood is awesome, and it was a nice change from the beef/chicken/bread/cheese Argentine diet. After lunch we went on a boat tour around the harbor and got to see the entire city from the water. We saw a few sea lions, and I swear me and Robin saw a penguin, which our guide said is rare but not impossible.

Lis and I decided to call Amanda, and she invited us to come over to her house to visit and meet her family. After attempting to use the public transportation (same situation- the driver forgot to tell us the stop), we got there eventually, and I was FINALLY reunited with my roommate. Her family is amazing- she has two older sisters who are really cool, a seven-year old sister (Bella) who is a whirlwind but absolutely adorable, and the nicest mom and aunt ever. They insisted that we all stay for dinner, and so we crammed all 11 people around their dining room table and gossiped and talked for a few hours. Altogether a great experience. After dinner the girls and I went back to the hostel and met our other roommate, Rob, who was pretty cool and laid-back, and looked a little like Ryan Gosling.

On Monday, we decided to take advantage of being near the beach, and we went to Vina del Mar, a little beach town next to Valpo. When we got there in the morning, the fog hadn't lifted yet, so we went to see the museum nearby that has one of the Easter island statues, did a little shopping, and got lunch at a tiny empanada place near the beach. For the record, Chilean empanadas are good but NOT better than Argentine ones, contrary to popular belief. After that, we went back to the beach and hung out there for a while. We put our feet in the water, so we could say we've been in the Pacific Ocean, but it was too cold for swimming. We stopped at the bus station on the way back to buy our tickets for the next day, and went back to the hostel for a bit.

For dinner, we tried to go to a vegetarian restaurant that Catherine had picked out (she's a vegetarian, which pretty much dictated our restaurant choices while we were in Chile), but when we tried ordering, we found out that in addition to not serving meat, they were out of: bread, cheese, pasta, avacado, quiche, and about half of their drink selection. Since that eliminated about 99% of their menu, we left and went to another restaurant near the hostel. I unintentionally ordered raw fish ceviche, which was actually good even though I was expecting to hate it. I can check that off my list of life experiences, at any rate.

When we got back to the hostel, we learned that two of the other girls there, who were visiting from Australia, had been robbed. They were on a tour with thirty other people, in a busy part of the city in broad daylight, when two men ran up, threw them to the ground, and cut their bags off of them, while about 100 people looked on. Although we had already been being careful with our bags (the most common phrase in Valpo is "Watch your shit", if that gives you any idea) we were even more paranoid after that. After hearing that story, we walked into our room only to find that two new girls, who had arrived while we were gone that day, had stolen Lis's bed, so apparently it's a city-wide trend. Fortunately there was another bed for Lis to sleep in, but I was really tempted to throw things at the sleeping thief.

Tuesday, April 7, we had breakfast at the hostel and went to wander around the city. We went to the ex-carcel, which is an old prison that is now a sort of artists' commune. There's graffiti murals on all the walls and strange sculptures scattered around, but it was completely deserted when we got there so it was a little eerie. For Beanie: the main prison yard reminded me of Sona, if that gives you any idea. Just graffiti covered. We were a little freaked out when a man appeared out of nowhere, introduced himself as Peter, and proceeded to tell us that he had been imprisoned at that jail years ago, but dug a tunnel and escaped with sixteen other inmates at some point in the seventies. Not sure whether or not to believe him, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.

At that point, Lis and I went to meet up with Amanda to have lunch. We grabbed some pizza and had a good time catching up, although it wasn't nearly enough time. When Amanda had to leave for class, she put us on a bus that took us to Pablo Neruda's house, where we met back up with Robin, Aly, and Catherine to take the tour. His house is really cool but didn't take as long to see as we thought it would, so we headed home a little earlier than planned and stopped at a calling center so Aly and I could call home. I called my dad to wish him happy birthday, and apparently gave him a heart attack. I guess when Rose gave him the phone, all she told him was "It's Katie, calling from Chile, and she said she needs to talk to you" so he thought I was in trouble or something. Hopefully the relief made up for the panic? I don't know.

The girls and I went to a little bar for dinner, which was really cool and had mosaic tiles all over the entire room. We tried a really gross drink which was basically pureed pear mixed with red wine (I don't recommend it) and had some quesadillas before going back to the hostel to pack our stuff. We took an overnight bus to the next city, which was fine except for the two little girls sitting behind me who whined the entire ride. Boooo. The next place we went, Pucon, deserves it's own entry, and I figure the long entries are a little tedious anyway. More later.

Finally caught up! Applause, please.

On Friday, we woke up and had breakfast, then did homework until Roxana, our maid came by. We showed her all of the things that needed fixing in the apartment, etc, made some lunch, and then I left for my UBA class. When I got home later, Ben came over to see the apartment, so I hung out with him and Lauren for a bit. Lauren, Joe, and I went over to the girls’ apartment yet again (it’s sad how dependent we are on internet access), and the girls, Joe and I booked our trip to Peru! We’re going at the end of June/beginning of July and hiking the entire Inca trail, visiting Cuzco and Macchu Picchu- basically it sounds like the coolest trip ever. We went back to the apartment for dinner, and then Lauren and I went to the Di Tella girls’ apartment for a while. We all sat around and ate the amazing dessert that Joanna had made and watched The Graduate, complained about how early we had to get up the next day, and headed back.


On Saturday, we all woke up early to go to the Buquebus terminal for our BC trip to Uruguay. We met up with everyone at the terminal and got through customs. Anne ended up leaving to go home because she had been sick for a few days and wasn’t feeling up to it, but the rest of us got on the ferry for the 3 hour ride. Then I basically fell in love with Ben Pickering, because he came over to me and told me that he had withdrawn extra money for me for the trip in case I needed it. (He knew Stephen still had not paid me back, and I still did not have a debit card or access to cash. The fact that he pulled out money for me without me even having to ask shows you what a sweetheart he is.) The rest of the ferry ride was spent napping/listening to music, until we got to Uruguay. We all went to hotel and checked in, and then walked around the tiny tiny town of Colonia until we found a place to have lunch. I tried chuvito, a traditional Uruguayan dish which was delicious. Also, I had the best chocolate and dulce de leche cake I’ve ever had, hands down. Afterwards, our whole group walked with everyone to the beach and hung out there for a few hours, before heading back for city tour. Most of the tour was via bus, but we got to walk around a bit and take pictures. We all went back to the hotel to nap and then went out to dinner at a restaurant called Patrimonio. We were seated outside, which was a little chilly and windy because it was right on the water, but the atmosphere and the food were great. The most disappointing part of the evening was my dessert. After tons of other people at the table decided they couldn’t eat another bite and didn’t order a dessert, they all decided to sample mine when it got there. Suffice to say there was left than half of my cake left by the time I got to take a bite. Booo. Figuring out the bill was a nightmare because we were paying with three different currencies (US dollars, pesos, and Uruguayos) and one person who shall not be named underpaid by a significant amount and refused to put more in. Got back to the hotel around two, showered and tried unsuccessfully all night to get some sleep.


The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel, which was boring but not terrible. We all went to rent bikes, which is apparently the accepted method of transportation in Colonia. Some of the boys got four wheelers and mopeds, but I went with everyone else and got a regular bike. This turned out to be a relatively bad decision, because crappy bike + cobblestones + intense heat + long bike ride does not add up to a great ride. However, we biked to the beach (cobblestones = ouch), went swimming and laid out for a while, which was great. I needed more beach in my life, and that weekend definitely helped. Later on I went with Ben G on his moped, and we rode around for an hour or two touring the city and whatnot. We broke into the old bull fighting ring outside of town and took some pictures, then headed back to beach to meet up with the other. We all biked back and visited a little craft fair before finding a restaurant for lunch. Robin and I got some fantastic paella, but there were so many flies buzzing around the table (you literally could not pick up your fork for more than a second before you had to put it down to swat at them) that it kind of ruined the experience a little. A few of us took a mini field trip and climbed up in the old lighthouse in Colonia, and returned the bikes. Ben let me try driving the moped for a bit, and I got the hang of it pretty quickly, which was fun. We got ice cream on the way back to the hotel and went to the pool for a few minutes. At 6, we went back to the Buquebus terminal to catch our ferry home. Most of the ride was spent playing the “destiny” game, which is like MASH but supposedly reveals the name of the person that you’re destined to be with. Mine is apparently Ben Goldeen, and about six people got Lauren for theirs. Altogether hilarious. We were so tired by the time we got back that we basically went straight to bed.


Monday the 30th (oh my god, it’s been two months already) I laid out with Lauren by the pool for a few hours and did history reading/chatted for a while before making lunch. We went to the girls’ yet AGAIN to use their internet, and hung out there for a while. We headed back home for dinner much later (rotisserie chicken and mashed potatoes, with arroz con leche for dessert, yum) and watched Breach, which came on TV randomly. The rest of the night was dedicated to homework, as usual.


The next day, I woke up ridiculously early in order to be at UCA by 8:30 instead of 10. I waited for the bus for almost forty minutes before deciding to take a cab so I wouldn’t be late. Since I only had a $100 peso bill on me, I asked the taxi driver if he could make change before I got in the cab. He assured me that he could, so I got in and told him where I was going. About halfway through the ride, he informed me that he actually did NOT have change for 100 pesos, and instructed me to get out of the cab, buy a $30 phone card at a kiosk, and give him the card as payment. Mind you, my fare was in the low 20s. After taking me to FIVE KIOSKS, none of which had change for $100, I finally was able to buy a phone card for my own phone to break the $100 bill. I told him that I was going to keep the phone card and pay him the exact fare in cash, and he threw a fit. I guess he was hoping that getting paid with a card would mean he didn’t have to report his fare, but I just threw the fare at him and got out of the cab as fast as I could, because the whole situation was beyond sketchy. FINALLY got to school in time for the movie that my prof was showing before class, and got out of class around noon. I sat in park during my 2 hour break, ate some lunch, and did a significant amount of history reading. The rest of the afternoon/evening was class and homework, until I finished and took the bus home. I had dinner with Joe, and then the two of us headed out to a café to use the wifi there without bothering the girls. We got there, and I started writing my paper (my goal was to finish it before I allowed myself any internet time at all). Joe, who needed to go online for at least a few hours, sat there and refused to ask the waitress for the access code to the internet because he was too “shy” to ask her. He wanted me to ask, but I told him that since he was a big boy and his Spanish was about ten times better than mine, I thought he could handle asking himself. He hemmed and hawed for about a half an hour, and by then the café was closing for the night, so we went home without any internet time whatsoever.


I wasted April 1st and did not pull a practical joke on anyone, unfortunately. Since Wednesday seems to be the day when we get all of our errands done, Lauren and I went grocery shopping and headed back to make breakfast. Afterwards we went back out to the pharmacy to buy hangers and other necessities, which we’ve been doing without up until now. I stopped by the girls’ briefly to email my history paper to Lauren so she could print it out for me before class, and ran home for lunch. I had classes at UBA and Universidad de San Andres all afternoon, and then Lauren and I went back to the Modena café for internet and split a ¼ kilo of ice cream. (Dessert before dinner is totally permissible in our house.) I finally found out about my PEL classes (they’re letting me switch to the ones I need, thank god) and found out that my BC housing group did not get chosen in the first round of the housing lottery for the six-man apartments. Not the end of the world, but slightly disappointing. We went home for dinner, and then Lauren, Joe, and I had a roomie outing to the movies to see “Locos por las compras”. It reminded me a little of “The Devil Wears Prada”, but was more chick-flick style. Not a fantastic movie, but cute and funny. I ran into Katie, one of my new friends from UBA (who, ironically enough, is the only other person from the USA in our class and is from Boston) and then headed home to go to bed.