Let me preface this by saying that I have been homeless/without internet for two weeks.

So it's not my fault that I haven't updated. Also not my fault that you're going to have to wade through the entire freaking novel that I've written waiting for my internet to be up and running again. I'll try to break it up into smaller entries, but for all you people who read this as a way to avoid your homework, you should be able to keep yourselves occupied for a while. Most of the entries are going to be a strict recitation of events until I catch up, which may be never. After that I can put some more thought into them.

So, picking up where I left off...

Wednesday was day two at Villa Gesell. We all woke up early to take advantage of the free hotel breakfast (I think we each ate about ten medialunas). Went back to sleep for a bit, and then half of the group headed out to find somewhere to get lunch since it was raining too hard to make the beach worth it. We got lunch at a nearby restaurant and made friends with a stray dog who clearly wanted our food rather than our company, and got ice cream afterwards. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a bookstore to buy something to read, since our plan to lay out on the beach for five days clearly wasn’t working out. I found a copy of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians in Spanish (translation: Diez Negritos) and bought it so I can practice. I figure I’ve read it so many times in English that I should be able to follow it even if the Spanish is over my head. The rest of the afternoon was spent in the hostel napping/reading/watching tv/snuggling with Joe and Lauren, and we met up with everyone later on to have dinner. We were at the restaurant for probably four hours, ran up a bill of over $500 pesos, and got the waitress to bring us a bag of ice to make drinks later. (This was only possible because she had been flirting with Memo all night, and he exchanged his email for the ice). Back at the hostel, everyone hung out for a while and had a few drinks, until someone had the brilliant idea to go skinny dipping at the beach. Anyone else noticing a trend here? A bunch of kids went in the water with various amounts of clothing (I did not), and then everyone went back to partake in several group showers. Easily one of the oddest experiences of my life. About an hour later, several kids discovered they were missing various articles of clothing, and there was another middle-of-the-night beach search, in which some things were found and others were not. I’m sure the first people on the beach in the morning were slightly weirded out, but I think everything was recovered eventually.

Thursday was my last day in Villa Gesell. I had about 50 medialunas (aka croissants) for breakfast as usual, and we finally had beautiful beach weather. We all headed out to lay on the beach, and even though I used 50spf and was only out there for two hours, I still managed to get a sunburn where the entire outline of my bathing suit is burned into my back. Sigh. Took the bus home by myself, and took a cab from home from the bus station. My cab driver was pretty awesome, and taught me a bunch of useful phrases in Spanish, and explained some things about the language that were confusing me. (For example, “criminal” does not mean criminal in Argentina. It means assassin. I found this out when I commented on the number of criminals in the city and was met with looks of horror/confusion.) Picked up some things at the store and made dinner at the boys’ apartment. I read one of the books that I found in the apartment, called SPUD (it’s about a boy who goes to boarding school in South Africa- Lindsay, I thought you would get a kick out of that) and went to bed.

Friday consisted of killing time until my exam, which I completely bombed. One would think that my scores would IMPROVE after taking a three week intensive course, but clearly my brain works in strange ways. I could not utter a complete sentence on the speaking portion to save my life. Clearly an off day. Instead of taking the subte or the bus back, I wandered around the city for several hours and then headed back to the boys’ apartment. When I finally got there, I unlocked the door and walked in, only to see three people sitting at the boys’ table with all of our laptops and electronics lined up in front of them. I almost had a heart attack, thinking they were robbing the place and I had walked in in the middle of it. After I recovered from my near-cardiac-arrest, they explained that they were the owners of the apartment and were waiting for the furniture delivery of Steve’s bed, which they had scheduled for that day thinking we would still be on vacation. (They explained that they had moved the laptops because they had been sitting in the sun and they didn’t want them to overheat.) After we had established that they were not criminals trying to steal my stuff, we installed the futon, they hugged me about a million times, and they left. By that point, everyone else was back from the beach, so I met up with the girls and Joe at Kentucky Rural Pizza for dinner, and we all went to see Simplemente no te quiere (aka He’s Just Not That Into You- my new favorite chick flick) with all the UCA and Di Tella girls before heading home to go to sleep.

The next day, we all dragged ourselves out of bed to hop on a bus to go to an estancia (aka ranch) for the day. All of the BC-UCA kids (surprisingly) got there on time, but had to wait over an hour for John and Mickey, two of the Di Tella boys, to finally show up. At the estancia, we got to go in the pool for about an hour, and then we sat down for a traditional asado lunch. I tried blood sausage for the first time (gross, but not as terrible as everyone makes it out to be) and a bunch of other things as well. They also gave us ice cream for dessert and then we got to watch a cultural dance show, where they did a bunch of different traditional dances from different parts of Argentina. They explained that for the last song, it’s tradition for everyone in the room to dance, so they paired us off and taught us what I think was a polka. I got to dance with the main performer, which was pretty cool because he was good enough at it to make me look good.

The gaucho games were next, where a bunch of the ranch hands/cowboys/gauchos got to compete in horseback riding competitions and whatnot and we got to judge. I can now say for sure that the horsemanship here has to be the best in the world. They were amazing and they made it look so easy. Then the staff served us pastries and mate and we got to wander through a tiny museum exhibit that they had displayed there, and about fifteen of us piled onto a carriage for a tour of the ranch. After that, we went in the pool again since we were apparently too late to go horseback riding, and went home. The boys and I grabbed dinner at the food court in the mall (never have I been so disappointed with Chinese food) and got ready to go out for the night.

We ended up going to a club called Crobar, and somehow managed to get all the girls in for free and the guys in for $30 apiece instead of $50 got in free. If you ever go there, the secret is to say you’re with “Nacho Mendez”. I don’t know if that’s a secret code or if Nacho Mendez actually exists, but it meant I didn’t have to pay a $50 cover charge, so I was pretty happy. Crobar was one of my favorite clubs so far- good music, cool setup, lots of people, etc. We stayed til around 5am and headed back to the boys’ apartment to go to sleep.

Joe and I went to Hard Rock Café for lunch on Sunday (the 8th, bear with me) because we were craving American food, and then wandered around the feria in Recoleta for a while. Unfortunately, we think the barbecue pork on Joe’s nachos made us sick (me only slightly, because I only had a bite, but Joe was pretty miserable). We walked back, and spent the rest of the day sitting around feeling sick. We skipped dinner because neither of us was feeling up to eating, but I got to read two books, which I haven’t had time to do in a while. Ben and Steve went to Kela’s for dinner (I suspect because they didn’t want to catch what we had), so Joe and I watched Nacho Libre and went to sleep on the tiny futon that we had been sharing for days. I hate being homeless.

Results of placement test are in- I still have to take the class. Unfortunately, all of the classes conflict with my schedule, except one that ends exactly when my class at my other university starts. I talked to Silvana, and she said she’s going to try to set something up so I could take the class at the University of Buenos Aires instead, which has an entirely different schedule and a better language program. I went to lunch with Joe, who seemed kind of annoyed at me all day, and met up with Ben and Steve halfway through. The boys eventually left to go grocery shopping, Joe headed over to the mall, and I packed my stuff and went to Catherine’s to escape the pissy testosterone levels that were taking over my life. I dropped my stuff off at Catherine’s new apartment, which was really cute (super jealous that everyone else is moved in while I’m still the homeless one bouncing from place to place and living like a hobo).

Catherine and I decided to head over to the girls’ house, mostly because I was SO SICK of boys at that point. On the way, we bought a kilo of ice cream and a bottle of champagne for a mini housewarming gift. When we showed up at the girls, gifts in hand, Lauren immediately went to the kitchen to get spoons, and the six of us ate the entire kilo in about five minutes. So much for dessert coming after dinner. Since we still needed to eat real food at some point, we all made pasta for dinner, and sat around watching Harry Potter, while we drank the champagne and a bottle of wine. The boys texted us at one point asking what our plans were, and we told them we were hanging around in our underwear eating ice cream and having pillow fights, and they weren’t invited. Basically a very satisfying girls night, which I think we all needed.

More later, of course. The first round of postcards is also going out soon, I swear. I will get to it eventually. Miss you all!