I don't have anything to profound to say with what looks to be my last blog entry. I decided to spend my last day/night awake rather than asleep, so I just finished watching the sun rise while eating a piece of steak from last night.
The experience has been incredibly unforgettable, but I think that I am finally ready to come home. I'll be flying out today, 30th and getting in very late tonight. I can't wait to catch up with all of you guys, and I hope you enjoyed reading about my experience here. If you are someone that was a part of my experience down here I really appreciate whatever you did no matter how small it was.
I'm home for now but I think that my next adventure is just around the corner...chau!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
El Sur: El Calafate and Torres del Paine
Off to Patagonia: One Last Time
Looking back on this trip, I think that I was meant to go on this trip as much as I was meant to do anything in my life. How do you like that for an opening statement. Trip after trip had failed and I was worried for a while that this trip would fail on me as well. I was supposed to go south with Nick and this had been in the plans for months. Unfortunately he took a class from hell that just finished a few days ago. Thankfully a minutes before Nick told me he couldn't go on the trip, Niru told me that she was in.
From here on out I had the longest string of good luck that I have ever had in my life. We found cheap plane tickets, stayed in awesome hostels, and stayed way under budget for the trip. We started off in a touristy town called El Calafate where we chilled, grilled out and drank a bunch of wine, or maybe I was the only one to drink a bunch of wine. The next day we headed off to the famous Perito Moreno Glacier. This was easily one of the coolest things I have ever seen. It is over 180 feet tall and monstrous in every direction. The ice takes in this beautiful blue color and it makes it very hard to look away. Every once in a while huge pieces of the glacier fall off and make this deafening noise. I managed to catch the biggest crack of the Gday.
We then left El Calafate to head to Puerto Natales in Chile. There our good luck continued. We managed to score a free tent, sleeping bags, stove, plates, knives, the whole shabang. I had originally expected this to cost a lot of money. I never knew that Chile is incredibly cheap with American Dollars. We lived like royalty in Chile, and I wondered why I didn't study there instead of BA. The next day we left for Torres Del Paine National Park. It is known as the most famous national park, and with good reason. The things we would see over the next few days are both breathtaking and unforgettable. I would call this an absolute must see for anyone that would go to South America. We trekked for 6 days through the park, and by the end, neither of us were ready to leave. Being in a place that gorgeous, where you have to work for everything you get really helps to put a perspective on things. I left the park knowing that I had just been lucky enough to see one of the great places in the world, and one that is scarcely remains a secret.
Sunset in El Calafate
Glacier Grey
Me and Cerro Paine Grande
Me and My Trusty Bag
Torres del Paine (Paine Towers)
Looking back on this trip, I think that I was meant to go on this trip as much as I was meant to do anything in my life. How do you like that for an opening statement. Trip after trip had failed and I was worried for a while that this trip would fail on me as well. I was supposed to go south with Nick and this had been in the plans for months. Unfortunately he took a class from hell that just finished a few days ago. Thankfully a minutes before Nick told me he couldn't go on the trip, Niru told me that she was in.
From here on out I had the longest string of good luck that I have ever had in my life. We found cheap plane tickets, stayed in awesome hostels, and stayed way under budget for the trip. We started off in a touristy town called El Calafate where we chilled, grilled out and drank a bunch of wine, or maybe I was the only one to drink a bunch of wine. The next day we headed off to the famous Perito Moreno Glacier. This was easily one of the coolest things I have ever seen. It is over 180 feet tall and monstrous in every direction. The ice takes in this beautiful blue color and it makes it very hard to look away. Every once in a while huge pieces of the glacier fall off and make this deafening noise. I managed to catch the biggest crack of the Gday.
We then left El Calafate to head to Puerto Natales in Chile. There our good luck continued. We managed to score a free tent, sleeping bags, stove, plates, knives, the whole shabang. I had originally expected this to cost a lot of money. I never knew that Chile is incredibly cheap with American Dollars. We lived like royalty in Chile, and I wondered why I didn't study there instead of BA. The next day we left for Torres Del Paine National Park. It is known as the most famous national park, and with good reason. The things we would see over the next few days are both breathtaking and unforgettable. I would call this an absolute must see for anyone that would go to South America. We trekked for 6 days through the park, and by the end, neither of us were ready to leave. Being in a place that gorgeous, where you have to work for everything you get really helps to put a perspective on things. I left the park knowing that I had just been lucky enough to see one of the great places in the world, and one that is scarcely remains a secret.
Sunset in El Calafate
Glacier Grey
Me and Cerro Paine Grande
Me and My Trusty Bag
Torres del Paine (Paine Towers)
Monday, December 8, 2008
Soccer, Asado, Race Track
Lately my life has been filled with lots and lots of nothing, but then something, then lots more of nothing.
I have something going on just about every day, but it usually lasts about an hour. I play soccer two or three times a week and I get excited like a ten year old before the Jacklelantern Tournament"(Sp.) in Lisle. But hey, passions are passions.
I finally got around to going out with the soccer guys which proved to be quite the interesting night. We went out to this really cool second story bar in San Telmo called "La Puerta Roja" (the red door). At first it was a pretty calm night, but then I got sucked into taking a few chili bombs. The night took off and crashed from there so to speak.
The next day I headed over to an Asado(bbq) at the house of one of the soccer guys, he's 29 and owns his own apartment, this place was absolutely baller. Flat screen tv, huge grill area, and lots of other cool toys. This was a good time, and the meat was outstanding as usual. Buenos Aires has really changed from a city where I do not think I could live into a city where I think I could absolutely live. Everything is about the friends you make and how accustomed you can make yourself. That night I watcthed "A Few Good Men" for the third time in two weeks, and was just as into to it as the other billion times. Nothing gets your blood flowing like the dialogue between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson.
I woke up this morning and headed to the race track with a few chicas. I normally suck at betting and of course my struggles continued. I managed to win one race out of the 7 that I bet on. I suck, badly. Then I told Niru to bet because others usually do well when I struglle and she proceeded to win 14 pesos on her first bet. The day was actually one of the better ones I have had yet, due to me actually doing something with it. I am currently waiting for room picks to start at DU, and then heading out for a birthday party argy style. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I am picking up the new camera tomorrow. Then Wednesday its off to Patagonia finally...chau.
I have something going on just about every day, but it usually lasts about an hour. I play soccer two or three times a week and I get excited like a ten year old before the Jacklelantern Tournament"(Sp.) in Lisle. But hey, passions are passions.
I finally got around to going out with the soccer guys which proved to be quite the interesting night. We went out to this really cool second story bar in San Telmo called "La Puerta Roja" (the red door). At first it was a pretty calm night, but then I got sucked into taking a few chili bombs. The night took off and crashed from there so to speak.
The next day I headed over to an Asado(bbq) at the house of one of the soccer guys, he's 29 and owns his own apartment, this place was absolutely baller. Flat screen tv, huge grill area, and lots of other cool toys. This was a good time, and the meat was outstanding as usual. Buenos Aires has really changed from a city where I do not think I could live into a city where I think I could absolutely live. Everything is about the friends you make and how accustomed you can make yourself. That night I watcthed "A Few Good Men" for the third time in two weeks, and was just as into to it as the other billion times. Nothing gets your blood flowing like the dialogue between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson.
I woke up this morning and headed to the race track with a few chicas. I normally suck at betting and of course my struggles continued. I managed to win one race out of the 7 that I bet on. I suck, badly. Then I told Niru to bet because others usually do well when I struglle and she proceeded to win 14 pesos on her first bet. The day was actually one of the better ones I have had yet, due to me actually doing something with it. I am currently waiting for room picks to start at DU, and then heading out for a birthday party argy style. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I am picking up the new camera tomorrow. Then Wednesday its off to Patagonia finally...chau.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thanksgiving and Mendoza
Thanksgiving
This was by far the weirdest Thanksgiving I have ever had. It was definitely different to be away from family and friends, but hey it was an experience. The first dinner was great, but not quite the same. Things just had their own litte twists I would say, but still a welcome taste. I was supposed to go to a second Thanksgiving but I didn't make it to that one for one reason or four or five more if you catch my drift. It will be good to be home next year for Thanksgiving again though.
Mendoza and Camping
This was definitely one of the coolest and craziest weekends of my life, but very peaceful as well. Me and Nick decided that we wanted to go camping in the Andes, but all we were able to find was these ridiculously overpriced packages to go with a guide. That was not exactly what we were looking for, so we talked to about 15 people in Mendoza, and after none of them would agree on what we should do we just decided to try something and hope for the best. We rented and bought a whole bunch of gear and food, and headed off into the wild.
We woke up the next morning at 5 to catch this shady mountain bus full of even shadier people. Consequently when I got off the bus one of these shady people walked away with my camera. Anyway, we took this bus about three hours up into the mountains, and we hopped off at this river that we esentially knew nothing about. I'm not sure how great of a job we did decided what to pack or wear because our packs were incredibly heavy.
It was supposed to be a five hour walk to this refuge where you could stay at or outside of, but at about four hours in we had barely gone anywhere. The hiking was like nothing I have ever done before and then adding a 50 or 60 pound back pack to that just made it that much harder. It was a great walk though. We were constantly climbing or walking next to the river or up a snow pile.
Eventually it got to be about 430 or 5 and we found this great spot tucked away in between a few mountains and decided to set up camp there. It happened to be the only place that we could find any grass as well. This turned out to be where we stayed the whole weekend. It took us forever to set up this damn tent because of all the wind, but afterwards it was all worth it.
The area around us was incredible, there was a mountain spring coming out of this bluff and the river was slicing through the mountains next to us. During the night you could hear the river moving these boulders and them slamming into each other. It was unbelievable. We spent a ton of time just hanging out, cooking and really doing a whole lot of nothing. The whole weekend we did not see one other person. The weather was really amazing as well. During the day the sun was the hottest I have ever experienced and really drained you. At night the temperature dropped below freezing. The sleeping bags they gave us were great, they were made for someone about 5'6, sucked for Nick as he froze his ass off with about half of his body outside of the bag.
This is the kind of trip where pictures do a better job describing it than words really could. If you want to hear a couple really hilarious and very scary stories let me know, because I would rather not put them in the blog.
Lately my travel plans have been falling apart, but I just booked my trip down to Patagonia so that one will not fall through. I have not decided what to do with this next week but I hope to do that relatively soon. It's really been wearing on me having these travel plans fall through, but the United States really screws you over. We make everyone pay big time to get in to the states so they do the same to US citizens, thats the reason i cannot go to Brazil....so thank you Bush!
PS. Nick sent me some really amazing pictures from this trip so I will try to get those in here or on Facebook when I can. The files are huge though and take forever to download
This was by far the weirdest Thanksgiving I have ever had. It was definitely different to be away from family and friends, but hey it was an experience. The first dinner was great, but not quite the same. Things just had their own litte twists I would say, but still a welcome taste. I was supposed to go to a second Thanksgiving but I didn't make it to that one for one reason or four or five more if you catch my drift. It will be good to be home next year for Thanksgiving again though.
Mendoza and Camping
This was definitely one of the coolest and craziest weekends of my life, but very peaceful as well. Me and Nick decided that we wanted to go camping in the Andes, but all we were able to find was these ridiculously overpriced packages to go with a guide. That was not exactly what we were looking for, so we talked to about 15 people in Mendoza, and after none of them would agree on what we should do we just decided to try something and hope for the best. We rented and bought a whole bunch of gear and food, and headed off into the wild.
We woke up the next morning at 5 to catch this shady mountain bus full of even shadier people. Consequently when I got off the bus one of these shady people walked away with my camera. Anyway, we took this bus about three hours up into the mountains, and we hopped off at this river that we esentially knew nothing about. I'm not sure how great of a job we did decided what to pack or wear because our packs were incredibly heavy.
It was supposed to be a five hour walk to this refuge where you could stay at or outside of, but at about four hours in we had barely gone anywhere. The hiking was like nothing I have ever done before and then adding a 50 or 60 pound back pack to that just made it that much harder. It was a great walk though. We were constantly climbing or walking next to the river or up a snow pile.
Eventually it got to be about 430 or 5 and we found this great spot tucked away in between a few mountains and decided to set up camp there. It happened to be the only place that we could find any grass as well. This turned out to be where we stayed the whole weekend. It took us forever to set up this damn tent because of all the wind, but afterwards it was all worth it.
The area around us was incredible, there was a mountain spring coming out of this bluff and the river was slicing through the mountains next to us. During the night you could hear the river moving these boulders and them slamming into each other. It was unbelievable. We spent a ton of time just hanging out, cooking and really doing a whole lot of nothing. The whole weekend we did not see one other person. The weather was really amazing as well. During the day the sun was the hottest I have ever experienced and really drained you. At night the temperature dropped below freezing. The sleeping bags they gave us were great, they were made for someone about 5'6, sucked for Nick as he froze his ass off with about half of his body outside of the bag.
This is the kind of trip where pictures do a better job describing it than words really could. If you want to hear a couple really hilarious and very scary stories let me know, because I would rather not put them in the blog.
Lately my travel plans have been falling apart, but I just booked my trip down to Patagonia so that one will not fall through. I have not decided what to do with this next week but I hope to do that relatively soon. It's really been wearing on me having these travel plans fall through, but the United States really screws you over. We make everyone pay big time to get in to the states so they do the same to US citizens, thats the reason i cannot go to Brazil....so thank you Bush!
PS. Nick sent me some really amazing pictures from this trip so I will try to get those in here or on Facebook when I can. The files are huge though and take forever to download
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thanksgiving Argi Style
Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!
I am definitely a little bit bummed to be spending Thanksgiving in a foreign country away from family and friends, but it will be another experience I suppose. This morning I received the bad news that going to Brasil will not fit in my plans, so that was pretty dissapointing. I guess when I become a baller some day I will be able to do that. It came down to me having to pick trekking through Patagonia or going to Rio de Janeiro and at this point in my life it was not a very hard decision. I´ll probably be flying to a place called Salta in the Northwest of Argentina next week so that should be cool. I am thinking about doing either sky diving or bungy jumping there, so hopefully I´ll have some cool pics
I just got back from an amazing weekend in the Andes full of beautiful nature and near death experiences, but my camera was stolen so I am waiting for Nick to send me the pics. I hope to have an update about that up as soon as possible.
Today I am going to two different Thanksgiving dinners, one in about an hour, and one later tonight, so I will report back on how the turkey tastes in the southern hemisphere. I hope you guys all have a great Thanksgiving and I will see you again before you know it. Chau!
I am definitely a little bit bummed to be spending Thanksgiving in a foreign country away from family and friends, but it will be another experience I suppose. This morning I received the bad news that going to Brasil will not fit in my plans, so that was pretty dissapointing. I guess when I become a baller some day I will be able to do that. It came down to me having to pick trekking through Patagonia or going to Rio de Janeiro and at this point in my life it was not a very hard decision. I´ll probably be flying to a place called Salta in the Northwest of Argentina next week so that should be cool. I am thinking about doing either sky diving or bungy jumping there, so hopefully I´ll have some cool pics
I just got back from an amazing weekend in the Andes full of beautiful nature and near death experiences, but my camera was stolen so I am waiting for Nick to send me the pics. I hope to have an update about that up as soon as possible.
Today I am going to two different Thanksgiving dinners, one in about an hour, and one later tonight, so I will report back on how the turkey tastes in the southern hemisphere. I hope you guys all have a great Thanksgiving and I will see you again before you know it. Chau!
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Korean Food, Colonia, and More
Why Does Brian Suck at Updating?
Maybe some of you are wondering why I have been on a hiatus from the blog, or maybe you forgot about the blog and did not notice. I have been uber busy the last few weeks because in South America we have finals really early. I just yesterday finished my fourth out of five classes. If it were merely tests I think I would have had more time to update but every class is making us write essays. Thus far I think I calculated that I wrote upwards of 67 pages of research papers in Spanish. Sucks right, but hey I now only have one class left, so thats nice.
I'll try to hit a few of the highlights from the last few weeks and add some pics in if I can. I am working on a really slow internet connection so I'm not sure if the pics will work.
Corea Town
I have become pretty good friends with another halfie like myself who is half Korean and actually knows her Asian culture. She lived in Korea until she was twelve so she still speaks fluent Korean. She mentioned to me that there was a Korea Town in BA and that we should go eat there. I am not sure if she was joking or not, but I bugged her until she gave in an took me there. After taking the bus to the bufu ghetto of Buenos Aires we eventually came upon Corea Town(half a block of shops). We sat down at this restaurant where I asked for a menu, apparently Koreans don't use menus, they just have pictures. We decided it would be best if Gabi just ordered for us. They proceeded to put out a ridiculous amount of food for two people, and that Gabi being the great friend that she is told the owner that I wanted to eat some meat.
I did not know what was going on, but the lady left the restaurant and came back with a bunch of meat and whipped on this really cool cooking contraption. Gabi tutored me on exactly how you are supposed to eat this stuff which if you didn't know , you would look very stupid. It was a really neat experience trying out all of this new stuff, and it was cool because I felt like Anthony Bourdain with my tour guide Gabi along to show me whats up.
Football
One of the things I regretted the most about the first month or so I spent in Argentina was not getting to play enough soccer. That has definitely changed, and I am really having a great time with the games that I've found. Through the help of one of the guys from my program I joined a group of about 20 or 30 internationals who play a few times a week. It's a cool group of guys with players from all over the world. It's a better game than I was originally playing in and it's nice to just have another group of people to hang out with.
One of the guys in the group actually lives out by me and is from Argentina, so I have been going too and from the games with him. My Spanish has markedly improved since this time, and while I work on my Spanish he is trying to get his English down so he and his girlfriend can move to Canada. This week alone I have 5 hours of soccer which is great because I can finally earn all this meat that I have been eating. Surprisingly I have actually managed to score goals in Argentina, something I havent done since about oh first grade. Though Charlie may be justified in his skepticism of my scoring abilities, I am having fun while it lasts.
Colonia, Uruguay, Sasha
For as much as I have travelled down here in South America, I had still yet to leave Argentina as of last week. I do not really regret that because there is a ton to see, but I was looking forward to getting out of dodge. Our program pays for us to go on two trips, the first being Bariloche and the second to the small town of Colonia, Uruguay. I wasn't really all that thrilled about this trip because people had told me that it was sort of a boring place, and I am an ADD type person. So when Niru mentioned to me she was going to be staying an extra couple days I surprised myself by wanting to do the same. We left with the program on the buquebus which is this incredibly high speed ferry and were in Uruguay within the hour. It was nice because we literally left the smog of BA behind us.
We got there and met up with our program director who owns this absolutely baller house a few minutes away. We went there and had a really great asado, and afterwords Nate, John, and I polished off about half of the wine supply in the pool. 
Good times. Everybody else in the program took off an headed home while Niru and I went to our hostel to check in. We had a pretty chill night and really didn't do too much.
The next day was the big day. The thing to do in Colonia is to rent scooters and cruise around. We were both pretty pumped for this. We got to the place and the dude was much more serious than I thought he would be. He demanded that we had experience so I told him that I had rented a similar scooter in Europe (never rented a scooter, and never been to Europe). Niru as it turns out did not bring her drivers license so we could only rent one...thank god. I let her drive twice. The first time she slammed into a curb and asked me where the reverse button was, yikes. The second time I tried to get on with her and she could not support both our weight, yikes. Goes to show, don't send a girl to do a mans job (Argentine attitude). We cruised around quite a bit and eventually found this awesome beach with grills set up, picnic tables the whole deal. We decided that it would be a good idea to grill, so we scrounged up some wood (that's how you grill down here, it's awesome) then we bought the necessities, Chorizo, Chimichurri, and cerveza. The first attempt on the chorizo went poorly because there was a ton of space between the grill racks and all I had was a plastic fork to turn them. Later I realized that I could just turn them with my hands. Anyway I was pretty pissed at myself and so when I went to go buy more I was in a rage and turned the scooter too fast and scraped the paint of the front of Sasha.
I was really worried because I had heard horror stories that they would make you pay a ton of money to repair it. Turns out that the guy asked me if I hit something (te pegaste algo?), I said no, and he said, (no pasa nada) it's nothing. That was amazingly relieving.
That night we were still living it up from our first parilla and decided to do it again at the hostel. This time we bought some big steaks, a few bottles of wine, and I tought Niru how to make twice baked potatos. Amazing dinner needless to say. The next day I had a 930 boat back, but I didn't make that one, nor did I make my class. We still had a bottle of wine left from last night so we decided to just chill, drink wine, and half a beach day. All in all this trip was a lot of fun, and way better than I could have imagined. It definitely matters who you travel with, because Niru was a lot of fun and really easy going aka chiilll.
Now that school is almost over I am starting to plan out my next months. I am for sure going to Rio de Janeiro probably near the end of November, and me and Nick are trying to plan a trek for next weekend in the Andes. I'll keep you updated on the happenings as much as possible. Free time is now my life, and my life is free time. Suerte a todos!
Maybe some of you are wondering why I have been on a hiatus from the blog, or maybe you forgot about the blog and did not notice. I have been uber busy the last few weeks because in South America we have finals really early. I just yesterday finished my fourth out of five classes. If it were merely tests I think I would have had more time to update but every class is making us write essays. Thus far I think I calculated that I wrote upwards of 67 pages of research papers in Spanish. Sucks right, but hey I now only have one class left, so thats nice.
I'll try to hit a few of the highlights from the last few weeks and add some pics in if I can. I am working on a really slow internet connection so I'm not sure if the pics will work.
Corea Town
I have become pretty good friends with another halfie like myself who is half Korean and actually knows her Asian culture. She lived in Korea until she was twelve so she still speaks fluent Korean. She mentioned to me that there was a Korea Town in BA and that we should go eat there. I am not sure if she was joking or not, but I bugged her until she gave in an took me there. After taking the bus to the bufu ghetto of Buenos Aires we eventually came upon Corea Town(half a block of shops). We sat down at this restaurant where I asked for a menu, apparently Koreans don't use menus, they just have pictures. We decided it would be best if Gabi just ordered for us. They proceeded to put out a ridiculous amount of food for two people, and that Gabi being the great friend that she is told the owner that I wanted to eat some meat.
I did not know what was going on, but the lady left the restaurant and came back with a bunch of meat and whipped on this really cool cooking contraption. Gabi tutored me on exactly how you are supposed to eat this stuff which if you didn't know , you would look very stupid. It was a really neat experience trying out all of this new stuff, and it was cool because I felt like Anthony Bourdain with my tour guide Gabi along to show me whats up.Football
One of the things I regretted the most about the first month or so I spent in Argentina was not getting to play enough soccer. That has definitely changed, and I am really having a great time with the games that I've found. Through the help of one of the guys from my program I joined a group of about 20 or 30 internationals who play a few times a week. It's a cool group of guys with players from all over the world. It's a better game than I was originally playing in and it's nice to just have another group of people to hang out with.
One of the guys in the group actually lives out by me and is from Argentina, so I have been going too and from the games with him. My Spanish has markedly improved since this time, and while I work on my Spanish he is trying to get his English down so he and his girlfriend can move to Canada. This week alone I have 5 hours of soccer which is great because I can finally earn all this meat that I have been eating. Surprisingly I have actually managed to score goals in Argentina, something I havent done since about oh first grade. Though Charlie may be justified in his skepticism of my scoring abilities, I am having fun while it lasts.
Colonia, Uruguay, Sasha
For as much as I have travelled down here in South America, I had still yet to leave Argentina as of last week. I do not really regret that because there is a ton to see, but I was looking forward to getting out of dodge. Our program pays for us to go on two trips, the first being Bariloche and the second to the small town of Colonia, Uruguay. I wasn't really all that thrilled about this trip because people had told me that it was sort of a boring place, and I am an ADD type person. So when Niru mentioned to me she was going to be staying an extra couple days I surprised myself by wanting to do the same. We left with the program on the buquebus which is this incredibly high speed ferry and were in Uruguay within the hour. It was nice because we literally left the smog of BA behind us.
We got there and met up with our program director who owns this absolutely baller house a few minutes away. We went there and had a really great asado, and afterwords Nate, John, and I polished off about half of the wine supply in the pool. 
Good times. Everybody else in the program took off an headed home while Niru and I went to our hostel to check in. We had a pretty chill night and really didn't do too much.
The next day was the big day. The thing to do in Colonia is to rent scooters and cruise around. We were both pretty pumped for this. We got to the place and the dude was much more serious than I thought he would be. He demanded that we had experience so I told him that I had rented a similar scooter in Europe (never rented a scooter, and never been to Europe). Niru as it turns out did not bring her drivers license so we could only rent one...thank god. I let her drive twice. The first time she slammed into a curb and asked me where the reverse button was, yikes. The second time I tried to get on with her and she could not support both our weight, yikes. Goes to show, don't send a girl to do a mans job (Argentine attitude). We cruised around quite a bit and eventually found this awesome beach with grills set up, picnic tables the whole deal. We decided that it would be a good idea to grill, so we scrounged up some wood (that's how you grill down here, it's awesome) then we bought the necessities, Chorizo, Chimichurri, and cerveza. The first attempt on the chorizo went poorly because there was a ton of space between the grill racks and all I had was a plastic fork to turn them. Later I realized that I could just turn them with my hands. Anyway I was pretty pissed at myself and so when I went to go buy more I was in a rage and turned the scooter too fast and scraped the paint of the front of Sasha.
I was really worried because I had heard horror stories that they would make you pay a ton of money to repair it. Turns out that the guy asked me if I hit something (te pegaste algo?), I said no, and he said, (no pasa nada) it's nothing. That was amazingly relieving.That night we were still living it up from our first parilla and decided to do it again at the hostel. This time we bought some big steaks, a few bottles of wine, and I tought Niru how to make twice baked potatos. Amazing dinner needless to say. The next day I had a 930 boat back, but I didn't make that one, nor did I make my class. We still had a bottle of wine left from last night so we decided to just chill, drink wine, and half a beach day. All in all this trip was a lot of fun, and way better than I could have imagined. It definitely matters who you travel with, because Niru was a lot of fun and really easy going aka chiilll.
Now that school is almost over I am starting to plan out my next months. I am for sure going to Rio de Janeiro probably near the end of November, and me and Nick are trying to plan a trek for next weekend in the Andes. I'll keep you updated on the happenings as much as possible. Free time is now my life, and my life is free time. Suerte a todos!
Thursday, November 6, 2008
I'm Back
I have taken a bit of a hiatus due to an overload of schoolwork. Down here the schedule is reversed which was the reason I had to leave so early. The benefit is that it is now Spring/Summer and I have already wrapped up three of my five classes. Jealous yet? Just kidding. People always say that studying abroad is a semester of grade inflation, but I think I found a program that strongly disagrees with that mentality. By no means are the grades bad but they leave a bit to be desired. I am really looking forward to travelling and seeing more of South America. At this point I have a lot of options and nothing really decided. Where will I go, how will I get there, do I go alone or with people...and so on. I'm just happy that I only have about 15 to 18 more pages of Spanish to write. 70 pages seemed insurmountable at one point in time, but now it is just something I can look back on and be thankful I will never have to do it again.
Culturally I think I have really adapted well, and I feel as though we are now living in the same world instead of walking around in someone elses. The Spanish is going well except for in my house where I think there is all together too much pressure. There are constant references to the past students who did this or that, but it's all good. I'm definitely not going to be ready for the adventure to stop but there will be a few really great thing about coming back to the United States.
Bariloche
I was going to write a really long post for this one because it was a trip that really felt like something good was going on. I have used this blog as my journal in many ways, but I decided that I am going to keep most of this trip to myself. To give you a brief rundown on what happened...
Our program went in two groups of sixty each and since I was in the second group I figured I would know what was going on. It was great to fly again. The plane took under two hours and a bus would have taken over 20. Not a sensible ratio. The weekend was a great chance to reconnect with people in the program who I had not seen for quite a while. Since then I have expanded my horizons a bit with who I am hanging out with in BA. The mountains and the scenery were unbelievable. When I think of Patagonia, this is what I want to remember. I found that this trip justified my decision to come to Argentina and really reaffirmed the person that I believe I am.
The weekend was a great time to act like a kid and just enjoy simple things like swimming in a freezing cold lake at night, and sitting watching shooting stars. Sounds sentimental I know, but I would like to see you go there and not feel something. Anyway if anyone wants to hear more about the trip I would love to talk about it, but some things are best kept simple. By the way, if anyone is reading this who went to Glacier National Park with me, this place is very very similar, but Glacier still ranks as the coolest place I have ever been.
Culturally I think I have really adapted well, and I feel as though we are now living in the same world instead of walking around in someone elses. The Spanish is going well except for in my house where I think there is all together too much pressure. There are constant references to the past students who did this or that, but it's all good. I'm definitely not going to be ready for the adventure to stop but there will be a few really great thing about coming back to the United States.
Bariloche
I was going to write a really long post for this one because it was a trip that really felt like something good was going on. I have used this blog as my journal in many ways, but I decided that I am going to keep most of this trip to myself. To give you a brief rundown on what happened...
Our program went in two groups of sixty each and since I was in the second group I figured I would know what was going on. It was great to fly again. The plane took under two hours and a bus would have taken over 20. Not a sensible ratio. The weekend was a great chance to reconnect with people in the program who I had not seen for quite a while. Since then I have expanded my horizons a bit with who I am hanging out with in BA. The mountains and the scenery were unbelievable. When I think of Patagonia, this is what I want to remember. I found that this trip justified my decision to come to Argentina and really reaffirmed the person that I believe I am.
The weekend was a great time to act like a kid and just enjoy simple things like swimming in a freezing cold lake at night, and sitting watching shooting stars. Sounds sentimental I know, but I would like to see you go there and not feel something. Anyway if anyone wants to hear more about the trip I would love to talk about it, but some things are best kept simple. By the way, if anyone is reading this who went to Glacier National Park with me, this place is very very similar, but Glacier still ranks as the coolest place I have ever been.
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