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..