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.