Chile

This first part was written in May 2010:
So another semester has passed and I am just now getting around to finishing my blog from South America. Surprised? Yeah, I'm not either. I wish that I had finished it while I still remembered what all happened, but I'll just have to do the best I can, I ended a few days before we left for our free travel week. I did actually start a post starting to tell about free travel, so here is what I had and i'll add on at the end:

In the few days that I didn't blog before leaving for free travel not a whole lot happened. Just normal classes, and packing. We had lots of homework and tests that week. Went to aerobics and fight class and what not.



Thursday after class we finished packing, said our goodbyes and headed to Tres Cruces. Bused to Colonia, and got on the Buquebus which took us to BA. We stayed the night in Hostel Colonia, all eight of us in one room. It had the smallest showers I have ever seen, and the room was extrmely hot but it was fairly cheap and it was only one night.



Friday October 30:



We woke up, ate breakfast, and went to the ATM to get money, and came back to check out. We had to be out by 11 and our bus didn't leave until 3 so they held our stuff in the hostel and we went to waste time so we could get on our way to Mendoza. We walked down Florida street and stopped to look at and buy some jewelry at the street market. It's almost lunch time so we stop at a huge Burger King that has three stories. We order food and end up sitting on the 3rd floor, in an area where it is just the 8 of us. We eat and play some cards until a security guard comes in and tells us we cannot play cards. So we begin to play Never Have I Ever. We play a full two rounds and still have some time. Ben goes to put his cards back in his backpack and his backpack is gone. He looks at us like what did y'all do with my backpack, thinking we were playing a joke on him. He is rather fun to mess with but for once we had nothing to do with this. There were only a few other people who entered the room while we were in there and none of them got that close to us. It still mystifies us how someone got a backpack out of the site of eight people. Ridiculous, but it happened. His backpack had his ACU i-phone, camera, passport, wallet, and his tennis shoes in it. We went back to the hostel to figure out what to do.



We ended up sending Dara, Taylor, Abel, and Rachel on to the bus station with their luggage and told them to get on our original bus, and to see if they could switch the rest of our tickets. Kate, Ben, Joyce, and I stayed in BA to get Ben a new passport. We went to Citibank, they were not helpful at all, we went back to BK, again no help. We luckily found a Kodak store to get new passport pictures taken, which was funny cause they guy made us push ben's hair back. We hopped in a cab to get to the embassy, when we went inside the embassy, they didn't even ask to see the rest of our passports, we go through the metal detector and that was it. Very different from the Montevideo Embassy. We go inside another building and the guy sitting at the desk doesn't even speak english inside the American Embassy in BA. We go in, sit and finally get an new emergency passport for Ben, but then we find out that we need to make a police report so that he can get the stamp to get out of Argentina. We get word from the other group that our new bus leaves at 8. We end up going to 3 police stations, and there is a waiting list to make police reports. We get on the list and go back to the hostel to cancel his cards and get our luggage. We need to be to the bus station by 7 to get our new tickets. We don't get called to give the report until 6:30, finally finish at 6:45 about. None of the taxi's want to pick us up with our luggage so we walk to the Buquebus station. From there was finally get a taxi at 7:05 but we had to overpay. We finally arrive at the bus station at 7:20. The first window we go to the lady tells us we cannot change our tickets. She goes ahead and calls another window and tells us there are 3 tickets for us at window 33, "but there are 4 of us." We go to the window and the guy has our new tickets printed with our names on them. The rest of our group is amazing, they went ahead and changed them for us, we just had to pay a bit to change them. We had 20 spare minutes to grab some food and get on the bus. It felt so good to be on that bus. There was nothing but the grace of God that got us through that day and on the bus. If we had done one thing in a different order we would not have made it. God is so amazing!



Saturday October 31:



Our bus arrived in Mendoza only 2 1/2 hours after the orginal bus. So we ended up getting the better end of that deal. The other group was surprised to see us so early. They had planned on meeting us. We all showered and went to lunch at a restaurant called coffee's. Dara and I split the lasagna and a pizza, both had ham. :/ After lunch Taylor, Dara, Rachel, and I went back to the hostel to nap. The other four went to buy Ben some new shoes since all he had left were flip-flops. Around 8 we went out to find dinner but nothing was open yet so we ended up sitting down and waiting. I got bored and got up to walk around and Taylor accompanied me. When we got back the rest of the group was sitting at the Mexican Restaurant, which did not hurt my feelings at all. I got a bean burrito, not the same as in the US because it had black beans but it was still really good. We went back to the hostel and hung out until we went to bed.



Sunday November 1:



We woke up and ate breakfast at the hostel and took a van to Argentina Rafting. It took about an hour to get there and then we had to wait a while but we finally got our wetsuits, put them on and loaded up in a bus with our rafts and headed to our starting point. There were only 6 to a raft so we ended up being split between the three rafts. Dara, Taylor, Joyce, and I were together with an Austrian couple. Our guides name was Diego, and we had a guide in training named Hermann. The river was only rated from 1's to 3's but it was still pretty fun. The water was freezing and it was so brown that i looked like chocolate milk running down the mountain. When we got back to the site we ate lunch then everyone but Joyce, Rachel, and I went canopying. Most of us got sunburned. We went back to our hostel, cleaned up and went to find somewhere to eat dinner. We ate at a place called La Casa Usher then went to bed.


Monday November 2:


We woke up, at breakfast, checked out, and walked back to the bus station. Our bus left at 10 but did not arrive in Vina until 2 hours after our tickets said, probably because customs took forever, and at one point I wasn't quite sure ben was gonna make it into Chile. Once we arrived at the bus station we ended up taking a van to our hostel because it was too far to walk. We stuffed all 8 of us plus our luggage into about 10 seats. Dara, Taylor, and I were in the very back and didn't even have room to put our feet down. We checked into our hostel which was pretty nice, the five of us girls were suppose to have a room to ourselves, but apparently there was a mix up and we were in a room with 3 stangers. Woo hoo! We went to dinner at a little Italian place called Pepe's and I had what was very similar to linguinie with alfredo sauce which was really good except that it had ham in it. Have I mentioned that I was starting to get a little tired of ham by this point in the semester? After dinner we went down to the beach, this one was on the Pacific Ocean, and the water was freaking cold!


Tuesday November 3:


After breakfast we headed out to find a cambio, which took freaking forever, then we went back to the beach to soak up some sun before another bus ride. The water was still freezing, but the beach was gorgeous, deep blue water, tan sand, and a city line to the left. We went and grabbed some lunch, we found a place to get hotdogs that came with guacamole, mayonaisse, lettuce, and tomato on top. pretty funky. We hopped on a bus for about an hour and a half and were in Santiago by 4. We were supposed to meet our ride out to Lo Valdez at 4:30 across town. So to the subway it was. About 10 stops later and we made it off the subway to meet the guy 4:30 on the dot. What a relief. We were in a van again but this time our luggage was on the roof so we were actually able to ride comfortably. We sang half of the way there and finally arrived up in the Andes around 7:30. We ordered dinner, I had some amazing spaghetti, we chilled for a while, played some idiot and went to bed early.


Wednesday November 4:


Woke up and had another very tasty meal and we headed out to hike up to the hot springs. After about an hour Dara, Kate, and I stopped and sat on a rock for about an 1 1/2 drinking mate and talking. We headed back to the hostel, ate lunch, and hiked around the refugio for awhile just enjoying God's amazing creations, breathing in the mountain air. After awhile the others went to nap and I was trying to finish journaling. Around 4 ben showed up which is crazy that he was able to make it back so fast. The others came back about half an hour later. We did some chilling, then ate dinner and drank leche con chocolate. After dinner we went out and sat on a rock and watched the sun go down over the mountains while singing. It was an absolutely amazing night sitting in the beauty that God made. Once the sun was gone so was the warmth, so we went back inside and played some games before heading to bed.


Thursday November 5:


After breakfast we packed up our stuff and hung around the refugio waiting for our ride back to Santiago. Rachel and I met an old man while sitting outside. He was chilean but spoke perfect english and even a little german. He was really nice and asked us lots of questions. Back in Santiago we checked into our hostel and went to find a cambio/atm and do a little shopping, then we spent the rest of the afternoon playing pool and hanging out. We ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant across the street that had a skeleton outside wearing a bright blue dress. After dinner we watched Motorcycle diaries in Spanish and then went to bed.


Friday November 6:

I never finished my journaling for the rest of the trip at this point so this is what I can remember.

We woke up and ate breakfast which was really picked over and not real great but other than that the hostel was pretty nice. We got really lucky with all of our hostels, yes some were nicer than others but they all had really nice people and were fairly clean. Anyway we left the hostel and headed downtown to ride the funicular. The funicular is like a trolley that goes up a big hill in the middle of Santiago, halfway up is the Santiago Zoo, and at the top there are some shops and an awesome view of the city. After taking a ton of pictures we came down and started more shopping. Almost all of us bought panchos, and we even bought a hat that said Chile but had the texas shape on it for Wimon but ended up leaving it at the hostel. :/ We ate lunch at a KFC, and yes I do mean Kountry Fried Chicken. Did some more shopping for the rest of the afternoon. We went back to the hostel and Dara, Taylor, and I went to find somewhere fun to eat dinner. We found a restaurant called Happy Mosaic and our whole meal was half price because we ordered before 9. We had good food and enjoyed our last night in Chile. We went back to the hostel and packed and went to bed to get ready to get up early to catch our bus.


Saturday November 7:


We got up early and got on the bus and spent the next 27 hours on that bus..oh fun. It actually wasn't that bad, it passed by pretty quickly. We played some games, listened to music, and watched some movies including a bootleg copy of x-men origins: wolverine where all of the action scenes were grey, and also there was a movie I believe it was called Rudy that was a German movie with Spanish subtitles about two kids and their pig that runs away and saves them. We also kept getting these really funky alfajores that none of us liked except for ben so he got like 10 of them. Dinner was interesting as well. Yum, bus food! And sleeping with random people on a bus is always my favorite. We arrived back in Montevideo late Sunday morning. And i'm not real sure what I did, prolly some homework and just relaxing, glad to be back at home after our very eventful free travel week. We had our normal 9 o'clock service in the man loft and went to get our regular la cigale afterwards followed by bed being that we once again had to get up early for class the next morning. We had a truly amazing week, I can't even describe all we went through that week. We had lots of laughs and fun times, but then we had the times where we could have easily given into the chaos. We pulled together as a team and brothers and sisters in christ and with his help we made it through a week we will never forget. He is truly an awesome God!

Brazil

Friday & Saturday October 9 & 10:

We left at 4:00 pm on Friday for our 20 hour bus ride. We played lots of games, almost all of us had our own seats on the way there, so sleeping was better than on a normal bus. The time passed fairly quickly. On Saturday before leaving Argentina we went and visited the Jesuit Ruins and Horacio Quiroga's House. We finally arrived at our hotel in Brazil our rooms were rather small but we were never in them for that long. It felt really good to shower. We ate dinner then just hung out, watched a little soccer on tv, and people hung out in our room. Kate and Matt had a INTS book duel, it was rather funny. I fell asleep while everyone was still in our room. I was so tired.

Sunday October 11:

First we went to the bird park that is pretty much across the street from the National Park. There are over 150 species of birds there. They are all either endangered or were injured and could not survive on their own in the wild. We were able to walk through some of the cages and get right up next to the birds, the toucans in particular were very friendly. Next we walked over to the falls. The line to get in was epicly long, you could not see the entrance from the end of the line but we did make it eventually. Because there was a chance of rain later in the afternoon we went ahead and went on the boat ride as soon as we got there. It included a short safari ride, a little hike to see a hidden waterfall, and then into the boat where we got to go through the mist of one of the falls, we got soaked, it was so fun. There was so much mist that we could only see that one little set of falls..we all thought it was amazing, yet we had seen nothing yet. There was so much more to see. We went and changed out of our wet clothes and walked the trail to see the rest of the falls. The most amazing thing I have ever seen. You can truely see the power of God when you look at how much water is pouring out in any given second. There are not even words to describe! Pictures too are nothing! They are pretty but are nothing compared to the real thing. After we got back almost our whole group got in the pool and we played volleyball. Afterwards we went to dinner, then had our own worship service, during which it started pouring rain! When we finished Taylor and I went and stood in the rain, it felt so good to stand and smell the rain. Then several of us went and played mow and Uruguayan BS until time for bed.

Monday October 12:

This was the day that we were suppose to go to the Argentina side of the falls but due to the rain we switched our days. So we went to the Itaipu Dam instead and we went on the Dam Tour. The Itaipu Dam is one of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World. lol. On our way back we stopped in Cuidad del Este, Paraguay. Before we went this town was explained to us as Wal-Mart on crack that exploded into the street, and that is basically what it looked like. We ate in the Mona Lisa building, which is like a 7 story department store. They have the nicest public bathroom in the town. Afterwards we went shopping and most of us bought cheap jerseys. Once we got back to the hotel all of the Biochem majors videod an experiment for Chemistry Circus. It's on youtube and if you have not seen it you should go watch it. It is hilarious. It can be found under ACU Chemistry Circus :). We played some more volleyball in the pool. This became pretty much a nightly thing. Then we all showered and got ready to go to a dinner show. It showed the different types of dances throughout South America. They even invited Amber up on stage for a little bit. It was rather entertaining. We all went to bed after this.

Tuesday October 13:

This was when we got to go back to the falls on the Argentine side. Unfortunately we found out upon arriving that it had rained so much everywhere else in Brazil that the rivers had filled up and there was about 3.5 times more water than usual. This meant that the devil's throat was closed. We were all kind of bummed at first, but it ended up being okay. The point of seeing the devil's throat is the power of the water rushing over it. This day we were seeing that in all of the falls. It was like nothing I have ever seen before. We went on both lower trail and as far as we could go safely on the upper trail. It got to one point where it was blocked off cause you could see the water gushing over the walkway. We got to go stand and take pictures in some of the mist. I was glad we had gotten to see the Devil's Throat from the Brazil side. We stopped at an Artisan Market on our way back to the hotel. Once at the hotel we played more volleyball in the pool. Went to dinner at a place called Bottega, but this time we did not stay for their show. We played mow in Alli and Karaline's room and then went to bed.

Wednesday October 14:

This was our last day in Brazil. We started out the day by visiting a Guarani Village just over the border in Argentina. We saw different traps they set for animals, some of the children sang for us, and we bought handmade souvenirs they had made. We ate lunch at Pizza Hut for Amanda's birthday, it was so good to eat American style pizza. The pizza here is really good, but it is not the same. After lunch, Amanda, Jaimie, Dara, Josh, Lauren, and I went shopping on one of the main streets. Once we were done we took a bus back to the hotel but we ended up getting off way early so we start walking down the highway towards our hotel. We got a good walk and all was good until it started raining on us! It made a good memory though. When we got back to the hotel 15 of us went to Autumn's room to watch the futbol game on tv. Uruguay vs. Argentina for the 4th and 5th spots. There was 16 people in a tiny room in Brazil cheering for Uruguay. Who unfortuantely lost and now much play Costa Rica for a chance to go to the world cup in the spring. We ate dinner after the game and we had a cake for Amanda. Talked to people on the computer and went to bed.

Thursday morning we loaded up and spent the next 20 hours on the bus back to Montevideo. Again I spent the entire time in the back of the bus playing games, we played the marriage game and came up with a family tree. I didn't sleep quite as well on the bus this time cause I didn't get my own seat, but it was terrible, we had a foot rest. :P

It's Been A While

So it has been quite a while since i have visited my little blog..sorry. I'm not sure what happened but after Brazil things just kind of took off and i feel like i am constantly behind. I just kind of got out of the habit of blogging and then i never really got back to it. I myself hate that later in my life if i come back and read my posts that i will have about a two week gap where i did not blog at all. I can list some of what we did but not in the detail i could have. Anyway i'm gonna try and give a quick overview of what has happened since brazil and then sometime i will come back and add brazil in.

We came back from brazil on a friday morning, that day was spent recooperating after a long trip including 2 20 hour bus rides. Saturday between "studying" several of us went down to the beach to get some fresh air, we had a great time, we kicked a soccer ball around some as well as played frisbee. We took a break for awhile where they ended up burying me in the sand and sculpted me into a mermaid with a very long tail. Then we buried Abel. Afterwards we started heading the soccer ball, at one point we were all standing in kind of a circle and dara would toss the ball up and we would head it back, well i was next to ben and he decided that he was faster than me and went for the ball well of course he is not faster than me and so we hit heads so we then both had headaches..thank you ben, he has a rather hard head by the way. Around the same time this was happening matt was still playing with the frisbee, he chunked it but none of us were paying attention so it smacked me in the ankle and it swelled up and gave me a nice bruise which is still purple and still has a bump over a week later. I just love our boys. Overall though it was a very fun trip to the beach.

Sunday was normal, we went to the Feria and later we went to Raquel's house church. That was really interesting. Monday was classes all day like usual, except after class we had a freakout about our chile trip which caused quite a commotion and stress. Tuesday was normal as well plus aerobics. Wednesday biochem quiz, after class we went to the Torres-Garcia Museum which i know doesn't mean much to y'all now but i will show y'all some of his works when i get home. He is very big in uruguay. After the musuem we had tango lesson numero dos! We did a lot of review and practice and then we learned how to cut. :P which was fun but a little awkward at the same time, especially when you are cutting one of your professors. After tango we ordered chinese food. Uruguay has very good chinese food, but it is a little strange to think about chinese food in uruguay. The best part about this night was that Abel brought out the dr. peppers that he had brought with him, so to go along with out chinese food we all got a 12 oz. bottle of dublin dp. It was amazing, and Rosalinda made her brownies. :)

Thursday was pretty normal with class and later aerobics. Friday we had an extra biochem class then after spanish we went to visit the american embassy which was interesting but a rather short visit. It didn't really seem worth it by the time we got through security. We were inside for about 30 minutes before they shooed us out, it took us just that long to get in. Afterwards we got our final ticket for our Chile trip so we did eventually get everything worked out, so no worries. Once we were back at Casa we began cooking for dinner. Alli made enchiladas, mmm, she is such a good cook and i miss mexican food so much. Then i made brownies and everyone loved them even though i was a little disappointed because they did not taste like they do in america. sad. saturday dara, kate, rachel, abel, and i went with rosalinda to the blanes musuem to make up when we missed because we did the heart week thing. it was actually rather intersting cause a lot of museums don't interest me that much. after the museum we made cookies and dara and i made cake balls. it was a lazy saturday just hanging around and it ended by almost the entire group going down to ciudad vieja for amber's birthday. we ended up eating a korean restaraunt which was actually pretty good. lol. y'all would be surprised at some of the things i have eaten since being here.

Sunday was spent with me trying to study all day but a lot of it never actually stuck. pretty unfortunate but i just hate studying on the weekends. we had our regular chapel and then our traditional la cigale trip and more studying. i lost a good bit of sleep, but who is to not expect that the night before a biochem test. The test ended up being not so good but it was actually not quite as bad as i had thought. The INTS quiz was not particularly great either but being that i read right before class in a rather rushed manner it wasn't terrible. We had a guest speaker again and that always makes class go by faster. We went to Fight Class last night and all was good, it was Amber's birthday and we had all agreed that we needed to go to the gym cause we had eaten so much, again Raquel made a deathly chocolate cake. I actually enjoyed fabricios fight more than normal until right at the end as we were about to cool down amber fell. She sprained her ankle and it was really sad cause it was her 20th birthday. Luckily one of the gym employees offered to drive her home cause we normally walk to the gym. I rode with them though i realized after getting into the car that my keys were in my pants which rachel had so we got home and had to ring the doorbell. The boys had to carry her into the house, poor thing. The doctor was called and x-rays were done just to be sure, but she can't walk on it for a week and we all leave for free travel on thursday. Thus is life. The night ended with P-chem, which is a lot more entertaining when working on it with taylor and rachel and the various other people who popped in. Chilling a little and then finally going off to bed.

Rain Dance and Doctors Orders

So yes i am really behind on my blog but well i was a bit sick this week. So monday was exciting because guess what we did not hear the alarm or it didn't go off or something. So 9 o'clock rolls around and we are still all passes out in our room. So everyone meets for chapel and realizes that there are three people missing, wait..they are all in the same room. Boys: hey lets go jump on their ceiling. So the boys come and jump on our ceiling and give us a "rain dance" because it had been pouring all night. So my first thoughts waking up are "can uruguay get earthquakes and if so why are we not moving??" It does not help that any little move made in the classroom above can be heard perfectly in our room, so they jumping sounded thunderous. The house has pretty much no insulation. So we did make it to chapel so no worries but it was quite an interesting start to the day. So regular classes pretty much then that evening we were gonna go watch the exchange of a document with one of the presidential candidates, suppose to take like 20 minutes..so we get there sit down wait an hour for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates to actually show up. Then there was another hour of people presenting papers to the candidates as they sat there looking bored out of their minds..which was actually rather entertaining. They played with pens, stuck them in their ears, doodled, whispered to each other, laughed for a while at something we couldn't see, played with the name tags and all sorts of stuff. Finally after sitting their for two hours the VP can (larranaga) and then finally the P can (lacalle) spoke. After this they had another rally or something that they had to attend. But on the way out we did manage to take a group pic with both of them, Larranaga actually greeted me and a few of the other girls in a uruguayan manner (aka kissed us on the cheek). The photos are posted on facebook if you would like to view them, pretty exiciting. ALso Lacalle has actually been president of Uruguay before so yeah. pretty legit. so that was pretty much my monday.

Tuesday i'm not even sure what happened, this whole week has kind of been a blur cause i've been feeling off and on good and bad. I did have a P-chem test on tuesday tho. Wednesday i woke up feeling feverish so i stayed in bed until an hour before lunch. Ate lunch went to biochem, left biochem to see the doctor, went back to biochem and then pretty much spent the rest of the day in bed. Apparenlty i had a touch of the flu, but it wasn't terrible and normally i would not have even called the doctor but i did not want to have the chance of being sick while in brazil. So i slept it off and i feel a whole lot better today which is good because i get to spend the next 20 hours of my life on a bus! woo hoo! thursday was rather average too execpt that i almost slept through lunch and my lovely roommates decided not to wake me up. lol. thanks guys! but other than that just getting ready for brazil! so sorry this week was not as detailed but it will just have to do. i'm sure y'all will get a much more detailed description of brazil, so stay tuned for those updates, coming to a computer near you!

oh and i forgot so we did not have class today, and because it was raquel's birthday, raquel is our cook, we cooked breakfast for her this morning and made her a cake, and she got the morning off. it was quite fun. it was still really good and i think she really appreciated it. we had poppyseedless chicken and we had salad with RANCH dressing! this made my day! and for her birthday cake we had hawaiian wedding cake! it was really good, but no one got married, lol. okay anyway, we leave in half an hour! wish us luck!

Under the Weather

This weekend has kind of been a lazy one. We have all pretty much just been sitting around trying to recooperate from BA and get ready to leave again on friday for Brazil. This friday was spent in spanish class and then just hanging around. We went to Disco Natural to get some supplies for that nights dinner and i found some macaroni and cheese! Very Exciting! For those of you who know me know how much i love mac and cheese, a month without it was pretty rough. We ate fried rice and orange chicken made by Alli for dinner, it was yet again very good. The cooking in this house just cannot go wrong. Unfortunately dinner took to long and we were not able to make it to fight class, so instead we did an old buns of stell video we found up in the loft. It was lots of fun but i am very sore now. I do not believe that next time i will participate in this one. A little bit later we watched 101 dalmations and that was the extent of friday.

Saturday was suppose be a day of only homework but who wants to do nothing but work all day. We did sleep in a little bit, and I did get a little bit of homework done but overall it was not a truly productive day. Dara, Kate, and I went to Tres Cruces for lunch to eat at McDonald's. Then was the studying followed by some goofing-off on the computer. Most of us went to Castobo's for dinner, we ate there this time which we have not been doing often. I even got a piece of pizza dropped on my lap. After pizza it was time for another movie, this time is was the Prestige.

We sprung forward here during the night, so now we are 3 hours ahead of the US. Due to this fact, and also that yesterday I started to feel a bit under the weather i slept in this morning. I tried to do more homework today but i ended up taking a nap for awhile cause i just did not feel like doing anything. I got up in time to go get some dinner and then we had our 9 o'clock service. Now a bit of computer time and then off to bed. Hopefully i will feel better in the morning and it was just a touch of a 24 hour bug, i mean i'm not really sick just have no energy and whatnot. No worries, as long as i feel better by friday all will be well. Just about 4 more days and we are off to Brazil!

Semana de Corazon

Wednesday Septemeber 30:
It was nice to be back at “home.” However it was not so nice having to go back to class. We did have cooked breakfast which was nice. Had some Spanish lab, lunch was chicken and for dessert was pecan pie like brownies = amazing! Biochemistry wasn’t bad because we got a free quiz. After biochem Kate, Dara, Able, Rachel and I got to help with heart week. We went down the street to a clinic type thing and helped write down information like name, age, height, and weight. Anyone could come get their blood pressure, blood sugar and other tests taken to check their heart health. It wasn't the most exciting thing in the world but it was kind of fun and it was good experience for the future. Plus it counts for our community service for INST. We had some interesting experiences with that including kate telling one of the guys that he was going to the United States. We had some more Castrobo's for dinner and chilled around the house.

Thurday October 1st:
Time is flying by, i cannot believe it is already october. Where has time gone? Today was breakfast, house meeting, p-chem, lunch was Uruguayan enchiladas! Muy Bueno! Dessert was homemade chocolate donuts. Before lunch was our last lab for awhile so that is a relief. After lunch was more spanish class..as if we don't get enough of that. It rained here today. We took our laundry after spanish. I've been spending a lot of time on the computer trying to get caught up on my pictures from Buenos Aires. Around 6 Kate and I left for the Alianza where we had 6 people for conversation clubs tonight. It was very fun, they are so fascinated in everything about us and the United States. They asked a lot of questions and they speak very good english, much better than our spanish. They are very fluent, but they were all closed to being middle-aged. I am looking forward to going back to the Alianza, probably in November. We started learning how to do past tense in spanish today for real. We had heard a bit before but now we are actually learning it from the book. There is always so much to do, yet most of the time it seems like we are sitting around hanging out with everyone. So a little more spanish homework and then off to bed. And finally tomorrow is friday.

Buenos Aires!

Friday September 25th:
We woke up, ate breakfast, made our lunches, threw a few last things in my bag, and loaded onto the bus and headed out at 8:00 am. The time on the bus was predominately used for sleeping. Around 10:30 we arrided at a farm which also had many collections. The guy who owns it is in the Guiness Book of World Records for several of his collections. He had keychains, pencils, cans, ash trays, match boxes and so on. Also at the farm you could taste and buy jams including onion, tomato, eggplant, pumpkin, and red pepper. There were also a few animals, inluding ponies and emu type birds in the same pen. And there was a small playground with a merry-go-round swing thing that we had fun on. After playing it was time to load back onto the bus and go into Colonia. First we went to their old bull fighting arena. And we definately went inside even though there was a sign that said NO PASAR. We are such little angels. We had almost 4 hours to eat lunch and walk around Colonia before we had to go get on the ferry. We ate lunch in a pretty little park. We saw the light house and then walked around and did a little souvenier shopping. The ferry left at 5 and we arrived in BA around 6. It was a very smooth ride. We checked in at the hotel, went and got some Argentinian Pesos and went to get dinner. We ate dinner at a little Italian Restaurant two doors down from the hotel, it was amazing. It was called Brocollino or something along the lines of this. The pasta that everyone got was really good, and they had the most amazing lasagna. After eating we went swimming at the hotel in the heated pool :) until 11:30 when one of the employees came and told us that the pool closed at 10:00. Oops, but there was no sign and no one told us so oh well.

Saturday September 26th:
This was the day we got a tour of the city. We started out at Plaza del Mayo, we saw the Pink House and the Catholic Church where they have a memorial to San Martin. We also went to La Boca, Recoletta, and several other places around the city. In Recoletta is the cemetery where Eva Peron is buried so we got to see her family masoleum as well as many others. After the tour we ate lunch and went shopping at one of the ferias, they had a ton of awesome jewelry. Too soon it was time to go to the musuem. The first floor was European art including some Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Rembrant as well as many others. On the second floor was Latin American art which was very different. Afterwards we had a bit more time to shop but then we had to head back to the hotel to get ready for the Tango Show. We got all snazzed up and went to El Querandi, ate some dinner and then watched some very good tango dancers. I was at the end of our table so i had a front row seat for the show.

Sunday September 27th:
We began the day by meeting for church at 9. Unlike here in Uruguay where we don't even have to go outside to get to church, the church we attended was across town so we had to take the subway. It was cold and rainy outside. I really enjoyed the church service even though it was in spanish, but it was very cold during the whole thing. We did get to attend the English class afterwards. For lunch we ate pizza with the youth of the church. The original plan had been to go to a feria with them but due to the lovely rain we just chilled around the church playing ping pong, fusball, and getting to know the Argentinians. A little bit after 4 we left to go to the mall with them. We had to take a bus which was very crowded in we were definately all in each others personal space the entire bus ride..fun. The mall we went to was very big and it was also rather ritzy. Not the best place for shopping, plus everyone was in a rather cranky mood so we left and went back to the hotel, farkled a bit and then went out on another adventure. In the taxi on the way home from the museum we saw Hard Rock Cafe and decided we need to visit it. So we decide that we do not want to eat at Hard Rock because of the cost but we wanted to by souveniers and say that we got dessert there. So we go to the mall to get some more money out and to eat dinner, you wouldn't think that this would take that long and yet it did. We finally ate and get ready to go, well we could not remember exactly where Hard Rock was so we asked a doorman, we end up asking a second doorman and they tell us two different places. After asking a cab driver we decide it would be best to go back the hotel and find exactly where it is. We go back and ben looks it up on his iphone. So we get in two cabs and go to the streets where google maps said Hard Rock was, well guess what, it's not there. We end up walking and then we ask someone and at least 10 blocks later we finally find it after we are about to give up. It has the tiniest gift shop i have ever seen in a Hard Rock, but we did get our dessert and it was pretty good, inside it was pretty cool. We took a few pics and headed back to the hotel to find everyone else back from their jazz show. We all met in Amanda and Jaimie's room and discussed what was going to happen for free day and to celebrate Kate's birthday the next day.

Monday September 28th:
This was Kate's birthday, which also means it was my half birthday! Yay! We woke up got ready for our one free day in Buenos Aires, grabbed a little breakfast, and went to Florida Street to do a bit of shopping before going to La Boca for Kate's birthday lunch. We ate at a little outside restaurant that had tango dancers to watch while you are eating. They were not quite as good as the tango dancers at the show but they were still pretty good. Several of us got to pose for pictures with them. Kate got a little special attention as well. After lunch and a little shopping around La Boca we wanted to head over to Recolleta. We went back into the cemetery to explore some more being that the first time we only had a few minutes to see what was in there. After looking around for a bit a couple of us went back to the hotel. I took a much needed nap and it was amazing. Kate and I were both passed out until 7:20 when there was a knock upon our door, which was a good thing because we were suppose to meet for dinner in 10 minutes. We ate some dinner went back to the hotel and got ready to celebrate Kate's birthday. We went to hear a live band play. We weren't real sure what kind of music they were but they ended up being kind of an Indie band. They were pretty fun to listen to. We also had some starbucks while we were out. It was a pretty fun night and we enjoyed celebrating Kate's life!

Tuesday September 29th:
We woke up just like any other day, but we had to check out of our rooms before we left for the day. After we ate breakfast we were going to head to the zoo. We had a bit of mix-up and some fustration with part of the group leaving without letting others know, but we got past that and finally after a bit more confusion of direction got to the Botanical Gardens and had a relaxing morning exploring the gardens. After the gardens we went to McDonald's, i may have said this before but their McDonald's are so much nicer than ours. Some of you know that I do not like McD's in the states, but here it is actually pretty good. After lunch was the zoo. It was all in all just another zoo, however, different country so there were some different animals. They had your ordinary lions, tigers, and bears oh my. However they also had things like tapirs, kangaroos, anteaters, a red panda bear, hippos, rhinos and then they had bunny/deer like creatures and swimming, webbed feet rats, both of which were just wondering around the zoo. It was pretty exciting. We got done at the zoo and were exhausted so we went to a park to sit for a few minutes. Then it was time to grab some food and head back to the hotel to get our stuff and head back to montevideo. We went through customs and got back on the Buquebus (ferry) and headed back to uruguay. However the ferry this time was rather bumpy and almost made several of our group sick. Straight off the ferry we got on charter buses with a bunch of random people we did not know and bused it back to mont. We arrived at tres cruces, walked back to casa with our luggage, dropped it off and several of us made a trip to Castrobo's for some dinner. It was very good to be home.

Death by Raquel

Monday was another one of those days where we were going all day. Chapel, spanish, lunch, biochem, straight into INST, i was so tired by the time inst came i kept dozing off. Sadly we had a guest speaker so i felt bad for like sleeping while he was talking, but i was so tired i could not help it. After inst we had an hour to get all dressed up, which when all 11 girls want to straighten their hair and there is only one uruguayan straightener this creates a bit of a problem. So we got all cute and gussied up and set off to the Teatro Solis to see the Montevideo philharmonic orchestra. They were very good, and the theatre is gorgeous. They had a pianist who played with them on a piece composed by Beethoven and he was absolutely amazing, i have never seen anyone's fingers move so fast. On the way back home it is the Walkers tradition to stop at La Cigale and get helado. It was a very enjoyable night minus the blisters that got rubbed from my stupid shoes being it was quite a walk from the theatre back to casa.


So i am actually more behind than i realized, this week has been crazy tho. So tuesday i'm not even sure what all happened. I had normal classes, homework due in P-chem, lunch, spanish. For spanish lab we did walk around the neighborhood and were only allowed to speak in spanish. We also went to one of the local grovery stores during our lab time. I can't even remember what else happened on tuesday, i somehow wasted away the afternoon, and then all evening was spent studying for biochem. What a fun night..

Okay so yesterday, I spent the morning studying/goofing off. Spanish lab was alright. Lunch was made especially for Rosalina for her birthday. Whenever it is your birthday, you get to pick what we eat for lunch, and what kind of cake you want. We had portuguese chicken again, i liked it better this time. Then we had the most amazing chocolate cake you have ever eaten in your life. It was chocolate cake with a layer of dulce de leche, it had like fudge sauce, chocolate chunks sprinkled on the icing, you can just not imagine. We named this cake "death by raquel". After this amazing lunch it was time to face our doom: Biochemisty Test. I left the test feeling okay, and I ended up doing about how i felt that i would. We went to fight class last night, the first class we have been to this week. After fight class it was time for homework: p-chem, inst journal, and studying for spanish test.

Today was chapel, p-chem, spanish lab, lunch celebrating kate's birthday being that we will be in BA on her actual birthday. Kate wanted fajitas, and then we had another chocolate cake which was different but still a death by raquel. After lunch was a lovely spanish test, which wasn't horrible but was not that great either. For the most part i didn't do that bad, but there were definately a few things that i could not remember. Now we have a five day weekend because we are leaving for BA tomorrow morning. I have not decided yet but I will most likely not take my computer with me thereful I will be out of contact until tuesday night/ wednesday morning. This has not been the most exciting week but the excitement is about to come. This is our first trip and after this we are traveling every other week or two! I cannot believe we have been here for a month! The rest of today will be spent packing and recovering from this week. I think we are watching a movie tonight and then either english conversations or aerobicas. Yay for just having a chill night!

I'm not really in the mood to blog right now, my mind is full of things that i do not want to think about but that i cannot get out of my head. I would wait til tomorrow but tomorrow is going to be busy enough so i figured a quick update tonight would be good just so that i don't get in a blog swamp.

So saturday we slept in, trying to catch up on a bit of the sleep that was lost during the week. I believe around 12:30 we decided we better get out of bed. At 1:30 an Uruguayo named Hermann came and about half of us left with him to go ice skating at one of the local malls. It took quite a while for us to get there but we finally made it and we were a little unsure about the rink at first, it was rather small and the ice was rather bumpy. However, we went on with our plan and it ended up being a lot of fun. We made a lot of trains and just enjoyed each others company. And greatest of all i managed not to fall at all! After ice skating was time for some homework, which i got a decent bit done and then Kate, Dara, and I made a run to Castobo's for some pizza. Unfortunately after the pizza i never did get back to work, but that's okay cause i did partake in several hours of card games, which included learning how to play mow, not sure how to spell that one. We also played some idiot and ended with a neverending game of slaps. It was a good relaxing saturday.

Today Rachel, Taylor, and I decided to go to the church we saw on the way to the Prado, which there are pictures in the works on facebook. The outside of the church was absolutely gorgeous so we were curious to see what the inside looked like. It was really pretty on the inside too! I have now attended two Catholics masses. After church we went and played in a playground that happened to be on the way to the bus stop. Lol. Yes we are all 20 years old but that does not mean there is no longer an inner child inside of us. We grabbed some lunch at Lucas on the way back to casa and then sat in the kitchen and played some idiot, markers (really the game of spoons but we played with markers), and another game of slaps. Finally we pulled ourselves away and went and did some P-Chem..so much fun! By the time we finished p-chem we were really hungry so we made our second trip to castrobo's making it back just in time to sing with te youth of the church, who for the second week in a row failed to grace us with their presence. So we sung for about an hour and gave up. We had our church service at 9, we had some good conversations in it, but there was also a lot to think about. That pretty much get me caught up so that i can have my very busy day tomorrow, that is part of the reason that i dread mondays. I did get to talk to my dad and carla tonight so that was good, i have only talked to them once or i think twice before this. I am to the point to where i feel like this is actually becoming real to me. We are entering our 4th week of being here, can you believe i have already been gone for almost a month? i can't! On friday we start are traveling and from then on it is in and out of the country til time to go home in december. The thought of that is really exciting but also kind of sad. I really like it here but i am also really starting to miss my family and friends a lot! I know that i am the one in the new exciting place but i like to hear from y'all and hear what's go on there no matter how boring y'all might think life is there. Anyway love and miss y'all! Goodnight!

Yellow Fever.

Thursday morning started out with waking up extra early to put breakfast out. We all had to be on the bus by 8:15 to go get our yellow fever shots for brazil and to go apply for our brazilian visas. We drove to the port and went into a super sketchy building. Inside it looked pretty much abandoned, so we are standing in this little hallway thing and we have not seen a single person and then this door opens and there is a lady in a lab coat. That is the fastest i have ever gotten a shot, we checked our passport number with the guy at the desk stood in line for literally like a minute then it was our turn to get our quick stab and we were done. It did help that they knew that 15 people were coming to get yellow fever stots at a certain time. It was entertaining to me because Rosalinda, one of our directors was standing across from where we were sitting to get the shot and she kept telling us, now just look and me and it will be alright. She is like our mommy away from home. I enjoyed this though because she told that to me, i looked at her and she was like good, and then i turned to watch the shot cause that is much more fascinating to me. Granted not everyone likes to watch themselves get stuck, but i guess i am just strange like that. Anyway, we went and applied for visas which was pretty boring compared to getting shots, and then it was time for class. Spanish lab at 11. I am getting much better at spanish but i still freeze up when like a native speaker talks to me, it is rather fustrating. After lab was lunch which was stuffed chicken with a potato side which i was actually not that fond of which is strange because i love just about every type of potato there is. After lunch was regular spanish..oh boy. We had like two quizzes, es no bueno but yeah. After class we went and got our laundry, which if i haven't mentioned this, the laundry smells absolutely amazing when you pick it up, we are all in love with that smell, it is pretty much one of those smells that no one dislikes. After working on P-Chem for almost two hours, we went to english conversations, and yet again there were way too many people, it was 10 of us compared to 1 uruguayo, so several of us left. Matt, dara, taylor, and i went to go get food. Several of us ended up playing card games in the kitchen instead of doing homework, then we finally go check p-chem to find out that they are pretty much all wrong and must be reworked..fustration! We finally finish this and start playing the marriage game til it was past time to go to bed.

I did not want to wake up this morning due to lack of sleep but it was my last day to put out breakfast so i made it up, though it was kind of a struggle. We had p-chem this morning due to the shots and everything yesterday morning, but we were back to a regular schedule by spanish. Our spanish teacher sliced her foot open last night on a rusty nail and got sent to the emergency room but somehow talked the doctor out of having to get stitches. Lol, she is so adorable. also apparently a little crazy. Lunch today was chivitos again, they are so good! It rained all day today so after goofing off a bit after lunch me and dara decided that we definately needed to watch a movie in honor of the rainy day. We pushed our beds together and watched Sweet Home Alabama on my laptop. Lauren made dinner tonight, it was like taco casserole or something, it was really good. Apparenlty there is just something about this house that food cannot taste bad under this roof, it is like enchanted. After dinner was fight class, i wasn't sure if i was going to go cause i still had a bit of homework that was due at midnight; however, once i found out who all was going it was a must. All of the students but one went, we finally talked all 5 of the boys into going to our "lamo" gym with us tonight. They all say that our classes are super easy, but i think that most of them actually had fun they just don't want to admit it. But this was by far my favorite part of the day, fight class is just so much more fun when i can watch our boys behind me in the mirror. Anyway, everyone else just finished watching Hairspray, but what a shame i had to finish my homework. Well now it's done and everyone else is apparently having fun with out me so i think i need to go check out what they are doing, plus i am getting super tired.

Dario.

Every week we have our own kind of chores around the casa. This week I am the lucky one who gets to wake up early and put breakfast on the table on the days when we don't have a cooked breakfast. Yesterday was my first day to do so. Boy oh boy. I woke up an hour early ran out in my pajamas pulled everything out and ran back to my warm bed. Well it didn't go quite that smoothly but almost. I couldn't find the jam and a few other things, but it turns out we were actually out of jam so it wasn't my fault. P-chem was pretty normal, lunch again was amazing. We had gulash, which is pretty much a random mixing of ingredients in most cases, just whatever you happen to have on hand, well we had the most amazing gulash, we also had the choice between beef or chicken. Dessert was my favorite, i swear that they are trying to fatten us up. Though apparently i look like i weigh 20 pounds less than i do but that's a different story. Dessert was a very moist chocolate cake, which chocolate is something that they do not eat enough of, everything is dulce de leche, which don't get me wrong is very good, but it just cannot replace chocolate. The cake also has amazing chocolate icing, yes i know everything is amazing and that i should probably find a new word but i don't know i'm just feeling amazing right now. On the side to go with the cake was chocolate glaze, whip cream, and strawberries. We are in heaven here. After lunch was spanish, which instead of having our normal class we went to Expo Prado, which was basically like our fair and rodeo back in texas, except minus all the rides. There were places you could by stuff, and there were different exhibitions of the countries, including everything from china to the US, and then there were tons of cows, sheep, and horses. It was very intersting, i had fun, and it definately beat regular class. We were out most of the afternoon. Afterwards we went to aerobicas and matt went again, that is always really fun. After aerobics it was time to study for biochem quiz. I went upstairs to study with some of the others which after a little while turned into the cup game and sort of exercising, needless to say parts of me are sore today.

Today was cooked breakfast so i didn't have to get up early, yay! I studied for biochem most of the morning and then went to lab at 11. Wednesdays are my least favorite lab day, but today was not actually that bad. Lunch was portuguese chicken, which was good, but not my favorite, still cooked very well tho, other people really liked it. After lunch we started class 15 minutes early so that autumn and some of the girls could get done in time to get to the gym by 3. Autumn's favorite gym instructor, Dario, is only teaching in the afternoons now and she really wanted to see him. So we agreed to go to class in our gym clothes and leave right after. The class that we went to was not only only aerobics, but power aerobics..fun. Let's just say we did not stop moving the entire time. The class wore us out, but it was so much fun. Dario was hilarious. And i will definately have some sore muscles tomorrow, but hey i am building them. It was showertime and then time for a few errands. We grabbed dinner on the way back, chilled for a bit, and then watched the rescuers. Throw a little spanish homework in there and that was pretty much my night. Now i am exhausted with a very early day in the morning so goodnight to all!

And We're Back to Monday

It is crazy how much the time runs together here. It does not feel like a monday, i have to stop and think how long we have been here to realize that we are not entering our 3rd week of living in Uruguay! That is kind of exciting, in one way it feels like we just got here but on the other hand it feels like we have been here for months now. I feel that everyday we are learning more and more how to be Uruguayos. Although we will never completely fit in. Twice now when we have been walking on the street we have seen some of our friends from the church and we got to greet them using the culture here. They have a very different type of greeting than we do. We still stick out a lot by what we where tho, and and that is probably not going to change, but oh well. Even if we started dressing like them we would still stick out.

Anyway, yesterday started out with church at 10. It was another sermon that i pretty much did not catch a word of, except for the reference to the passage, both of the sermons i have heard were out of Ephesians. We did sing a song that we learned in chapel, which was very exciting for us to actually be familiar with something. After church Dara and I went to the feria, we were looking for soccer jerseys and we did not find a single uruguayan jersey. Last week they were everywhere, but now they are no where to be found. I guess we will just have to wait until the week of the next game. So we pretty much walked around the feria and wasted time, although i guess we did get exercise. Then we stopped by Castrobo's on the way home and got some pizza. The rest of the afternoon we worked on homework and i took a short nap. At 5 we had our usual singing with the youth next door, except they never showed up, so we sang with ourselves for almost an hour waiting. Dara and I decided to go get dinner after this but i needed change and the only cambio open on sundays is in tres cruces, so off we went. Ben and Josh happened to be leaving to get food at the same time as us so we decided to go together. Everything was really expensive at tres cruces so we ended up going to subway across the park. Talk about different. First of all, different everything. I got Italiano Parmeseano bread, the turkey they had looked very sad so i got ham instead. Ham is what is popular here, they eat it on everything. Idk what kind of cheese i had, and then they like microwaved it instead of toasting it. And sadly they do not have ranch here at all so i had to get mayonaise instead, their mayo is different here tho so it was intersting. Oh and btw their tuna is pretty much tuna paste, Josh got tuna and he said it did not even taste like tuna. Anyway so that was quite an experience. At 9 we had our normal service and afterwards, dara, kate, and i had some roommate bonding. It was a very good time, I love my roomies!

Today was a dreaded monday. Though classes were switched up a bit, but still. Breakfast was good, with banana pancaked again. We then had biochem instead of our regular beginner spanish. Lunch was gulash, which was actually the most amazing gulash i have ever had. I think it is literally impossible for Raquel to cook something that does not taste good. Dessert was really creamy cheesecake with either strawberry sauce or dulce de leche on top. Again amazing. After lunch was spanish, which again seemed to go on forever, then international studies. Bleh. Although we did watch part of an Eva Peron which was actually very interesting to me. This was getting us ready to go to Argentina, which we will be doing in about two weeks. After class we went and grabbed dinner. At 8 was fight class. Tonight Fabresio was teaching, but I do not like his classes as much, his are also way more crowded. I think i will stick to Esti and Valeria. Other than that is just kind of chilling around the house, and now it's time for homework and then bed.

Estancia.

Yesterday was another regular day. Woke up barely in time for breakfast and then went to spanish. Normally i kind of dread spanish, but it wasn't terribly bad, and the time passed pretty quickly. I just feel like we aren't learning much in class. Lunch was pork with about 10 million sides, and yes i actually ate pork. The dessert was a debate between oraange and pumpkin cake with either butterscotch or peanut butter icing. I don't know but it was really good. After lunch was our chill time, we are so busy during the week, we need time to just chill and goof off. I did read some of my inst book for monday, but i also spent a good amount of time on the computer. I also helped some with dinner. Alli made us indian food and it was amazing. My hand still smells vaguely of garlic (from grating garlic by the way). After dinner it was time for fight class! We did the clawing move and it is hilarious. I hope that i can still remember the moves when i get back to the states, fight class is so much fun, and good exercise! It was definately time for a shower when we got back. And to end our evening of relaxing, we watched a movie, eagle eye to be exact.

Today was the day we go to the estancia. We woke up got ready, kate went to the bakery and got breakfast and at 10 we boarded the bus. It took about an hour to get there. We went to the Estancia Renacimiento. We had a bit of free time while waiting for lunchtime, we walked around a bit and took a bunch of pictures. Finally it was time for lunch. I have never seen more meat in one meal in my life! First there was bread and this oil with like chives, onions and red peppers in it. They also brought out some salad stuff, but all seperated, not like in salad form. It was like a multiple course meal except they didn't wait for everyone to finish before taking it away and bringing something else. Also they just brought out like platters of food instead of like individual plates. The first course was like two different types of sausage. Then brought out baked potatoes, chicken, like steak, more sausage. Then they brought out slices of ham and cheese, which by the way they eat ham and cheese with everything. I think that was all but it was pretty outrageous. Oh and dessert was crepes filled with dulce de leche with ice cream. After lunch we went on kind of a tour of the estancia. First we went and fed the geese, ducks, and turkeys. Then we went by the horses and we got to see and feed two day old calves. They were adorable. We rode on a tractor pulled thing to show us around some of the land. After that we went and saw a replica of the orginal train station in Montevideo. I took several pictures of the layout for my dad. lol. We got to ride the horses after this. It would have been a boring ride because we did nothing but just walk around, but it was made entertaining because we named our horses based on their personalities. For example, i named mine drifter because he liked to vere off to the side. Matt named his omg i'm stupid or wow i'm dumb, he called it both, but his liked to try and sqeeze itself between the other horses, that or it would just stop and be be lazy. We had a snack, then we watched a cow get milked and that was the end of our visit. We loaded back onto the bus. Most of us turned on our ipods and rested. I was almost asleep and the bus starts making a stange noise. We blew a tire. Autumn got a picture of it, the rubber was like curled up on the tire. We sat in the bus for half an hour, we finally got going again and got back to the house in less than 5 minutes. We were so close we could have walked home. It was a fun day but we are all tired. And now we are relaxing and watching Aladin!

Olay Loco.

So here i am getting behind again, there is just so much to do during the day and not enough time to do it. Yesterday was uber busy and tuesday was full of homework to get ready for wednesday so you know...anyway i will give a quick overview of tuesday and then get on with yesterday and today. Tuesday was regular breakfast, class, lunch was chino food, very greasy tho. More class and afterwards i pretty much just goofed off with everyone else in the kitchen. We went to aerobics which started out with frabresio teaching and he was hardcore, we did nothing but jump around. It was very tiring but a good workout. Then after aerobics me and amber started researching for our religion paper however we could only find two sources, so we ended up having to go ask wimon for some help. Our third source ended up being the uruguayan constitution which we had to translate from spanish. After that i stayed up for quite a while making flash cards and studying for biochem quiz.

Wednesday was a much more fun day, but very busy and tiring. We woke up with cooked breakfast which always makes it a better morning. After breakfast we went down to the alianza to get a tour and talk about different opportunities to do community service. We need 10 service hours for our culture class. Some of the things we could do would be like lead one of the clubs and help them with their english. We could also visit classes and talk to the students in english. Also they have celebrations for our holidays like halloween and thanksgiving that we can help with. It actually sounded pretty fun, but also a little intimidating. Toward the end of the tour some of us had to leave to make it to our 11 o'clock class. There was 6 of us and we had quite an interesting experience trying to get our taxis, but you prolly had to be there. We went to lab and read children's books in spanish, we got to read Donde Viven Los Montruos. After lab we had an early lunch and started our afternoon classes half an hour early. We had a biochem quiz and i did good except i made a really stupid mistake. Ugh. Anyway we got out of class and had to literally run and change. We went to the legislative palace and got a tour of that. Me and rachel got a picture with the guard..he looked very unhappy. I know it's his job but idk he was kind of scary. We got to go in the senators chamber, the library and that was pretty much it except for the big open room in the center. The representatives were in session so we could not go see their chamber. The architecture was gorgeous, some of the art, a little strange. After the leg. palace we hopped some taxis, which i was in the back of a rather small taxi between abel and ben, not the best idea. Although if we wrecked i would have been well protected. As ben said, i was not going anywhere. We went straight to the futbol game. We got there about 5:15 and the game started at 6. The stadium holds 70,000 and it was at least 3/4 full. They did all sorts of chants which most of them we had no idea what they were saying and no one would translate for us. Wonder why. The two i did understand were Olay olay olay olay loco loco. and then Soy Celeste. Cause that is the color of our team. The game was a national qualifier for the world cup so that was very exciting. Oh and we won 3-1. Take that columbia. Oh and speaking of taking things, we found out from autumn that the oxford group was watching their qualifying match too, except they watched theirs on tv, and we were there in person. TAKE THAT OXFORD! After the game was time for homework and a little excitement from the game. It was a very busy day but packed with lots of fun.

Today we did not have chapel/house meeting due to our very busy day yesterday. P-chem was pretty normal, some interesting comparisons made between science and real life but other than that just another class. I am glad i have dr. sutherlin teaching it instead of dr. hardegree next semester. Not that gen chem was not fun, but he was hard to follow most of the time. Lunch toda was fish and chicken. The chicken was made for those of us who do not like fish. lol. Spanish droned on forever today, and about the only thing i got from it was that celeste means light blue. After spanish amber and i spent another two hours writing our paper over separation of church and state, but we did finish it. Dara, kate, and i pretty much ran to aerobicas and got their in just the nick of time. Some other chick was teaching at first and she was hard to follow, and i also felt that we were not getting much exercise. But then valeria finally came in and once she got their it was nothing but different types of jogging, but it gets you a good workout. Then we did abs and stretches. We went to castrobo's and got muzarella to go, and the cook could not understand my name, he thought i was saying denise. Finally at the end he said he would just call us maria. None of the uruguayans can say my name, it is kind of fun to hear them try tho. We had a nice quiet dinner at the casa, and then everyone else came back. We hung out in the kitchen again listening to blink 182 songs and then watching kates videos. Then almost everyone went upstairs to watch fern gully. Dara and i stayed down in the kitchen and made our first mate. We did the sweet mate with orange peel, it was really good but dara got the water a little too sweet. I hopefully will be bringing some yerba home with me so that everyone can try it, and by that time i will be an expert. Apparently uruguayans are known all over south america for their mate.

Mass.

We are not required to go to church here, but they do highly recommend it for several reasons. There is the main church that we are next to, or technically in the same building as, but we can go out and explore. There are not a vast number of churches but there are several catholic churches. A part of our international studies class is that we have to do an assignment about religion in Uruguay. Taylor and Lauren had to visit a catholic church for their paper, so me, dara, and kate decided to join them this morning. Well, it was actually more of afternoon. Mass started at 12:00 so we got up and went. My lovely shoes rubbed blisters on the way there and on the way back. The service only lasted an hour, it was interesting but that was about it cause i didn't understand most of it. Taylor, Kate, and I went to get pizza. Their pizza is different here but it is really good, from this place anyway. After pizza it was time for homework..exactly what i wanted to be doing on a sunday afternoon in Uruguay. Anyway, monday is our Latin America studies class so i spent most of my afternoon reading for that class. I read until 5 when we got together with the youth from Iglesia de Cristo and we sing with them in english and spanish. Afterwards a group of us went with them to Punta Carretas to get dinner. I have now successfully ordered for myself twice without getting confused and not understanding what the cashier is saying. Yay! We got back just in time for our 9 o'clock church service that we have in the casa. It is like our weekly english service. At the end of that I had a long conversation with Rosalinda who is one of our directors, i really enjoyed getting to talk to her and get to know her better and share part of my life with her. I had figured this out before, but we also discussed that I was in band with her daughter in law, so that was interesting. I got called away by my roommate to go talk to my parents, talked to them for a bit, finished some homework, showered and then went to bed...eventually.

Monday. Oh how i love mondays..not. This monday was extra busy cause not only did i have all of my classes, we had tango tonight, but i will get to that later. Breakfast this morning was amazing. Well first of all, my room got up late this morning so that was fun, but we were able to scarf a quick breakfast before chapel. Anyway, Raquel who is the main cook was back to work today. We had a fill-in last week cause Raquel was interestingly enough in the staates while we were coming here. Kind of a coincidence if you ask me, but you didn't. We had the normal eggs and bacon, but we had banana pancakes. They were so good. Spanish was okay it seemed to last forever tho, and i was right by the door so we were able to start smelling food, it smelled so good. One strange thing about Uruguay is they don't have very good mexican food, part of that is because we are all used to going to school and most of us living in texas and now we come here and their mexican food is nothing like our tex-mex, which i love so much. But today Raquel made us fajitas, and i'm not talking like buy tortillas and meat from the store and heat it up, i'm talking homemade tortillas, chicken, guacamole, the whole nine yards...we were in heaven. Today was the second day since we have been here that i had a food baby afterwards. It is a good thing that we walk so much and stuff or I would come back weighing twice as much as i do now. So anyway, yes lunch was very good. On to Biochem, so far the class is not that bad, i am enjoying having a nine person class, it makes it easier to concentrate and it's nice knowing the professor like on a personal level. Straight from biochem we go to LA studies, this class always drags on forever, it wasn't terrible today but it was also cut an hour short due to our evening activity. We took our quiz over what we read which wasn't great but could have been much worse. We discussed the book and then split up into groups and translated a song that discussed the same topic, but then we were done. Yay! We had two hours before tango which was going to be used to do homework, but then instead we tried to kill the mold growing in my mate. We will see how that goes. But that turned into taking crazy pictures in the kitchen on kate's computer. And then finally it was time for tango! First they came in and did the history, and then showed us a demonstration and then it was our turn. We had to learn how to walk, so we circled the room walking. We learned a basic stance and then split into guys and girls to learn our respective parts. Then it was time to practice. After that they taught us the actual stance, and then would throw in a few other things here and there. It was fun, a little awkward at times. Autumn took a ton of pictures so those should be interesting, and i can't wait to see them. I danced with all but one of our guys, they were all pretty good, but i had trouble remembering to let them lead. If enough of us are interested, we may start taking weekly tango lessons, but we will see. After that was just chilling, eating dinner, finishing homework and what not. The next several days are going to be very busy, especially wednesday, but i'll wait and let y'all hear about that when the time comes, as for now i am gonna get ready and go to bed.

Hecho!

Today was the first day that we got to sleep in and it was amazing. My room didn't wake up until 11:30. I got up showered and we went down the street to a corner bakery call delicity and got some sandwiches and came back and ate at the casa. We hung around the house for a little bit and then went to Hecho which was an arts and crafts exhibit that is held once a year in Uruguay. It was kind of like a once in a lifetime chance for us. There were a lot of cool things to look at, i only took like two pictures because we weren't really sure if we were allowed to take pictures or not. Only 9 of us went, then we split into smaller groups, my group included matt, karaline, and me. We walked all around though none of us bought anything. After that we went to the mall which was like right next door and we got some dinner. Matt got some kung pow chicken from the Chino place, but he said it was missing the pow. Me and Karaline went to McDonalds. We were both trying to order a small coke, and a McFiesta, and then i got fries. However something went awry when Karaline was ordering, we think that when she tried to say no onions that the lady heard chicken because the words have similiar pronunciations. Anyway, mine was 90 pesos and hers ended up being 140 pesos so we were like woah. When she got her food she had the McFiesta, her drink and then not one but two Pollo Americanos. You sort of had to be there, but it was hilarious.

After we ate we browsed the mall for a bit and decided to head back to casa. We made it to the bus stop and one of the other groups met up with us coincidentally. We are waiting for a bus and none of them are going where we need to go so we decide to go down the street a ways to another bus stop, well even less buses came by here so we walked down a bit more and finally decided just to take a cab. After we got back we went to La Cigale and got ice cream :), i have really been wanting to try sambayon, but we could not figure out what flavor this was, i looked in my dictionary and on-line and no where to be found. Upon trying it we finally agreed that it tasted similiar to eggnog. After the ice cream we sat outside in the courtyard and sang church hymns for several hours. Now we are just goofing around in our room about to go to bed. So on the note buenos noches!

Dinner gone awry.

Here is the rest of friday. While we were hanging out around casa, dara kate matt abel lauren me and later ben decide that we want to get out of the house for a bit. We went to the cambio and the banco to get and exchange money, then we went and got kate some yarn, she is now knitting a scarf. They sale yarn by the grams so she ended up with a large ball of yarn, you kind of had to be here to there to see it to think it was that funny. We were also looking for a mate cup for lauren, but we ended up splitting up into two groups. Dara matt and i went by tugays, got dara a laundry bag and then we home. We chilled a bit more and then decided we should eat dinner before class, so we get ready to make dinner and it takes us a while to get the stove lit and cut the chicken up, and the water is taking forever to boil cause we are making pasta. Well we pretty much run out of time so we decide that we will finish when we get back from our combat class. Combat class is yet another class that is offered at our gym, and is definately in spanish..this makes them all the more fun. We come back from class and in our hustle and bustle of trying to get to class on time because combat class fills up and it is a little gym, we take the unfinished noodles off of the hot burner and stick them on a different burner. When we got back they had finished cooking and then some, they were huge and were pretty much mush, so we ended up throwing them away and going to lucas, which is a cheap hotdog/hamburger stand less than a block away and you can get a hamburger for about $2 US or a hot dog for $1 US. After dinner we watched anastasia, which i have strangely never seen. After the movie we played taboo until after 1. There is just something about playing games with your professor until late in the night. My team lost by a lot but we had a lot of fun, you kind of had to hear some of the things said but anyway, that was my day. Tomorrow we may go to an art exhibit, or we might not..idk, but until then buenos noches!

Starting Classes.

Hopefully this post will get me caught up to today. Friday are our easy days, the only class i have is beginner spanish which is from 10:30 to 12:30 and lunch is at 12:30 so i woke up went to class went to lunch and now everyone is just kind of chilling aroung the casa because we have been so busy all week we all just want to relax. okay a little background for those of you who don't know. there is a group of 16 students and one professor from ACU (our biochem professor - autumn), and then there are the directors who are wimon and rosalinda. out of the students there are 8 biochem majors and various other majors, there are five boys and 11 girls. we have class, eat, sleep, and hang out all in casa, which is like a house but then again not so much. i hopefully will have pictures of casa to post soon..i just have to take them.

Okay so here is the rest of the week that i missed. Monday was our first day of classes, this is also my busiest day. breakfast at 8:30, chapel at 9:00, Spanish from 10:30 to 12:30, lunch, biochem at 1:30 straight to latin america studies until 6. at this point i cannot remember what we did monday night, but i don't think it was very exciting. tuesday was more exciting. tuesdays include breakfast, physical chem at 9:30, spanish lab, lunch, then two hours of spanish class after lunch. tuesday night was the first night we went to the gym. autumn found this gym last time she was here that is 200 pesos a month which is around $10 US, cheap for a gym. also autumn and the americans are pretty much famous at the gym, all of the instructors love us, mainly autumn but you know. so tuesday night we go to an aerobics class in spanish. um pretty sure i did not understand but like one or two words but it was a blast, we had to watch the instructor very close, and half of the time we had no idea what we were doing but it was so fun and a good workout. though sometimes we had a better idea what was going on than some of the uruguayan women. wednesday i have lab at 11:00, lunch, biochem and then this wednesday day we went on a bus tour around montevideo, i will be posting pictures from this hopefully today as well. our first stop was the cemetery, they are very different here but you will just have to see the pictures. we also went to cerro which is the hill located in montevideo and you can see like the rest of the city from up there. then we saw various other things like the presidents house, the american embassy, famous statues, la rambla (22 km of beach), some museums and such. after the tour a few of us went to a step class at the gym and we had a muy guapo instructor that we nicknamed sam. :)

so this pretty much catches y'all up, not as much detail and organization as i would have liked buy it gives you the main gist, so check out my pictures on facebook if i can get them uploaded and i might post again tonight to finish the day or maybe not, i think we are going to the combat class tonight at the gym and then we are going to watch a movie so we will see.

Continued.

Okay so back to dinner the first night of our arrival. This was our first time to get to ride in taxis. This was quite an experience because the taxi drivers drive quite fast and everyone here gets really close. Oh and pedestrians do NOT have the right of way. If you are walking in the street and a car is coming they will get right up next to you until you get out of the way, that is somthing to get used to. This was also the first time some of us got to use spanish, the person paying has to sit up in the front, even if they are the only person riding. We also cannot find a posted speed limit. So we get to dinner and downstairs is like an artisan market, there were lots of cool souveneirs and stuff to look at and get ideas of what to bring home. We spent some time down there cause most uruguayans do not eat dinner until like 9. When we went upstairs we were still a little early which was good cause we had a big group of around 20. I won't spend much time on dinner cause who hasn't eaten dinner but with it being our first group outing there are a few interesting things which happened. First of all there was the agua con gas..bleh, not a big fan. Also there was bread on the table which we dipped in this yellow creamy stuff that we believed to be butter with like chives based on taste..it was actually mayonaise. Though I am not a big fan of mayonaise it was still pretty good. Finally the food. It was fun to order cause we weren't real sure of what we were getting, everything was really good but it was all in huge proportions. I got what was like chicken fried chicken and it literally took up my whole plate, dara and lauren got the baked chicken which looked like they brought out half a chicken for each. We quickly learned that it was more reasonable for us girls to share meals at sit-down restaurants, and a good way to save money. For the poor boys it is a different story. After dinner we went back to the casa and watched the goofy movie, so much fun! This is the end of day one.



Oh and i forgot to put this in the first part, on the way to the casa the bus we were riding on stops suddenly and we are all like okay the bus just stopped really fast because everyone seems to do that...they all get right up next to each other and stuff. Well it turns out we hit a car, but barely and the bus driver was like it's okay, it's just a scratch, well the owner of the car was like no we must check it and as it turns out, the car broke one of the buses headlights and will now have to pay to get the headlight fixed..how crazy is that??

anyway..


Day 2 of Uruguay started out with a good breakfast, then we had orientation and worship and then it was time for lunch. Worship here is actually really good for only have 5 guys, they can really bring it to the table, and the girls all harmonize well together. After lunch we got a walking tour of downtown which was actually more of this is downtown walk around and answer these questions and then walk back to the casa, alright have fun see y'all later. And we had to turn in the questions for our latin american studies class. Downtown is called "old city" and is where a lot of my current pictures came from, the arch is leading into old city. We went in several catholic churches that were beautiful, we went down to the beach, and we went and ate at mcdonalds. ps their mcdonalds is way nicer than ours.

okay i know this is horrible but i am beginning to forget what we did the first few days, first of all everything is running together and it also feels like we have been here for a lot longer..today made it a week we have been here now. by the end of each day i have so much to say and that i want y'all to read and that i want to remember but there is so much to remember, and just not enough time in the day. also i want to keep this in order so i don't want to do today until get there so i will try and summarize and get caught up and then try to keep up with this.

so back to day two which by the way if i didn't say was friday. after we got back from downtown we went to cofas..kind of like a condenced wal-mart and we got stuff to make our first dinner at the casa. we had bow-tie noodles and a spinach cream sauce, very good actually for our first experience cooking as a group here. kate has a video of this and this is where the saying "take that oxford" originated, thanks to matt. after this we watched robin hood, the disney version, and afterwards was when we invented what we call flail ball..another "take that oxford"

On saturday we went to the bakery to get breakfast, this was interesting because we had to order in spanish which ended up being pointing and saying how many. then we bused to Punta Carretas, which is a local mall, we ate lunch there, another fun experience of ordering when you know very little spanish. then we walked to the feria, which is similiar to a flea market, this feria we were not much impressed with however there is another one that we liked better the next day. after this we had a tour of the church building which is right next door, and that we work with. the church used to be a coffee company. then we got to meet the youth of the church and eat pizza with them. this was the night we got to try mate! some of us liked it and some of us did not.

Sunday we got up and went to church in spanish! i did not catch a word of the sermon for several different reasons, but to help my case even the advanced students did not understand the sermon, it was that hard to understand. after church we went to the good feria, this first one was a lot of clothes and such, but this one had more souvenier type stuff...my group which consisted of me, dara, and josh bought our own mate cups, bombilla, and our own mate! yay! we also sang with the youth for awhile, they taught us spanish songs and we taught them english songs. that night we had our own english service and got ready for classes to start.

okay because i am having trouble remembering my own last few days i am going to break my own rule and talk about today and then hopefully tomorrow i will get caught up completely.

today was thursday for those of you who do not know when i am writing this..today we have been in montevideo for one week. we had breakfast at 8, house meeting/chapel at 8:30, p-chem at 9:30, spanish lab at 11:00, lunch at 12:30, today we had chivitos for lunch, and so far that was my favorite meal, it was amazing..for those of you who do not know a chivito is a sandwich which has a lot of stuff on it, normally they are steak but today was grilled chicken, for example, they have the main meat, ham and cheese, a fried egg, onions, peppers, today we have lettuce, tomato, and bacon, and then there is fries on the side or mixed in..hopefully we will show y'all how to make them when we get home. Estan muy delicioso! after lunch was spanish for 2 hours, then we went around to some stores to find body wash which apparently everyone uses bar soap here, after that we went to the park and played frisbee. at 7 we had english conversations with the church then several of us went to eat pizza. afterwards we played taylor's version of zoo, and matt's version, which i have a few pics of and hopefully will be able to explain some, but as for now dara and kate are trying to go to sleep and the light of my computer is very bright so buenos noches.

disclaimer: if you noticed my english is very bad, this is coming from us all talking part spanish and part english, it is also now a game to talk in a spanish accent..in fact some people cannot stop..

From the beginning.

Okay so i'm a few days late getting this started but hey at least it is finally up now. I will do my best to catch y'all up to what has happened in the past few days though most of it was just getting to and getting accustomed to the city. We have already had a number of adventures thought, pretty much everything they warned us of but said wouldn't happen, yeah those things happened to us..naturally. It's okay though we have each other and we all get along really good so far. I am enjoying everyone's company that is here.

So here goes..we gathered by the teague center to load buses, we took group pictures, said our last goodbyes and loaded the buses, oxford on the first bus and montevideo on the second and started our journey abroad. It was the slowest bus ride i think i have ever been one, it felt like it was barely creeping by, we sat and talked for awhile then to pass the time a little quicker dara, abel, and i played some farkle. Finally we arrived at DFW unloaded and went and got in line to check in and check our baggage..this is where our problems began. We had two people get their baggage checked by using the self check-in. Because we had a big group they had us split between the lines, some in the self and other in the regular check in, well if you are going to be in montevideo for more than 90 days you need a visa. We are leaving montevideo at the end of september to spend 5 days in buenos aires, therefore we do not need a visa. Well the airline did not accept our normal proof of leaving the country, which is our itenaries, they wanted actual proof of ticket confirmations that we were leaving the country. We sat with our luggage for about two hours waiting for our travel agent to get a fax of our bus tickets to BA and send them to the airport. Obviously we did get on our plane but the point is exactly what they said wouldn't happen to us of course did.

Okay so we fly 3 hours to miami spend about 3 hours in the miami airport. We ate dinner at Las Carretas, which is a cuban restaurant which gary green recommended to us, and got ready to spend the night on a plane. In boarding the plane which is scheduled to fly to BA, have a layover, and then same flight number fly the 45 minutes to mont., they tell me that my carry-on bag is too big and it needs to be checked, so they grab my bag and hand me a ticket, not asking my name or where i am going and shove me onto the crowded plane. At this point i am beggining to worry that i will not see my bag again, afraid that my bag will end up in BA. With this already worrying me i find that a woman is in my seat, so i am standing in the aisle not sure what to do, waiting to ask an attendent what to do, people are pushing by me, a baby is crying and we are all exhausted and can already tell that this is going to be a long night. Well it turns out the woman was in my seat because the seat next to mine had her husband in it so i traded seats with her to instead of being with the rest of my group i am in the back of the plane next to a latin man i do not know. This worried me even more. We eventually left, were served dinner which i could barely eat, and then i tried to sleep.

Well as it turned out they changed the course of the plane and we actually landed in mont first which was awesome cause we got there several hours early, hallelujah. Well so now i was really worried that i would not find my bag, it didn't come on the belt but finally autumn asked one of the workers and she radiod to the plane and they found it and sent it in. That was truely a God thing and i was so relieved. Dara however could not find her second bag so they reported it and it made an extra trip to BA but finally made it back to mont the next day so all is well now. She did have to wear my clothes for a day and a half but i am more than happy to help my roomie! This was yet another thing they said had never happened, and yet again it was us that it happened to. So we drove through the city, stopped by the beach took some pics and then loaded back up and headed to the casa!

The casa was not exactly what we expected but we love it none the less. Mont is awesome though i wasn't really sure what to expect. As americans we stick out so bad, oops i am suppose to be getting myself into the habit of not calling us americans cause we are in south america but oh well. Hmm i am trying to think of what else we did on the first day but all of our days are running together. This is why i need to get on everyday and tell of the adventures so that i do not forget but there was just so much to do to get ready! Oh i remeber thanks to our handy dandy schedule. We did a scavenger hunt around the area that is right around our street which by the way is colonia just in case i ever bring that back up. There is a main street that runs parallel to us called diez y ocho. Little geography lesson there. So that was kind of fun, we got put into groups of four, my group included rachel, amber, matt, and of course me. We had to go around colonia, diez y ocho, and Tres Cruces, which is the big bus station which is close to the casa. My group did not win so we only got little alfajores but they were still good.

But speaking of food that reminds me that everything here is so rich it is crazy, i guess it needs to be because of all of the walking that we do but it is definately not what we are used to. But back to the first day, we had a little free time so we unpacked and got our room set up, oh i am in the three person room with dara and kate which we are loving and having so much fun, well at least me and dara are, kate may not be. :P We also showered during this time to get rid of the nasty plane ride. Then we went to dinner but it is definately bed time here and we have our first day of classes in the morning so we will pick up with dinner tomorrow! Buenos Noches!