After 251 days, 4 countries, and over 36 hours of travel time, I'm finally home. It's going to be adjustment stepping back into this culture and life. But I had a really great time. I believe I received all A's and A-'s this quarter. I'm still waiting to see my official grades show up online. Over the next couple of days I will be sifting through the thousands of pictures I took this year and posting some up on here, so stay tuned for that. Also, I'm currently working on setting up a project that would benefit the elementary school in Libertador San Martin. Once I finalize a few things I will be posting more information on what that project is. Thanks so much for you support and prayers while I was on this trip. It means a lot.

Este, bueno, chicos, Chau.

Catching Up...Again

Again, please accept my apologies. Since my birthday/pre-Brazil post I've been running non-stop.

Brazil was AMAZING! Our hotel was right off Copacabana beach, literally across the street. From the top level we could see the statue of Jesus and all along the beach of Copacabana. The first day full day we were there we were supposed to go see Jesus but since so me individuals were not ready to leave when we were scheduled to, we weren't able to get tickets that day. So instead we went to Pan de Azucar, or Sugarloaf Mountain. It was really pretty and we could see so much of Rio. We ate at a really good restaurant (like every day there) and in the afternoon we "toured" the beaches; there are no private beaches allowed in Rio but many of the beaches attract similar groups of people: surfers, families, young people, old people. There is a beach for everyone. Tuesday we went to see Jesus but it was so cloudy we couldn't really see anything. It was kind of disappointing since the day before had been so clear. That afternoon we were dropped off at a mall for lunch. I got pizza, which was surprisingly good, and then my friends and I walked around for a bit. We found a Starbucks and I got two Brazil mugs,one for myself and one for Megan. Wednesday was a free day. I met up with a few ACA kids to try to go surfing/learn how to surf. Our tour guide had told us that Ipanema beach was the place to go, so we caught taxis and went to that beach. Unfortunately, it was still kind of cloudy and apparently the surfboard rental people dont set up shop on cloudy days. So we just played around on the beach, swam some, and relaxed. Thursday morning we left our hotel at 2:30am to catch our flight. We had a connection at Iguazu Airport and then to the local airport in Buenos Aires instead of the big international airport. It was all around a good trip and very relaxing, which we all needed.

As much as those 3 days in Brazil were relaxing, the last few weeks have been anything but! I have had an exam every week since our return, first we had a week for parciales (midterm exams). But since many of our classes hadn't had enough class periods yet, we had one the following week, one last week, and one this week. Next week is finals for three of my classes but I have to wait to take my Grammar final and Composicion final until the last Wednesday and thursday respectively.

Two more weeks and then I'll be finishing  up all my packing and coming home. Unfortunately, we all have to leave the UAP together. Why is that unfortunate you may ask? Because I will end up being in the airport for almost 12 hours before  my flight leaves. There is one student whose flight leaves at 11 am, mine leaves at 8:30 pm. It will be a long two days of travel home but I'm looking forward to it. It is time to come home.

Soon after I get back I plan on posting pictures. The internet is too slow here to be able to post them right now.

Have a great weekend!

Oopps, Silence is not a virtue here

Hello!

Very sorry for the overly long delay in posting something new. I haven't died..not yet anyway. I decided to take this opportunity to write a bit, catch up on some news, since we're leaving for Brazil tomorrow. That's right, Brasil!

Ok, a few weeks ago Megan came to visit for a week. We hung out in Buenos Aires for a 2 days and then we headed up to Iguazu Falls in Misiones for 3 days. We had a really great time. A totally different experience than when I was there in January. The river was flooded so it wasn't very pretty. We thought we were going to drown in the river when we were on the boat. It was kind of terrifying, ask Megan, she will tell you. Then it POURED while we ran to see the rest of the park before it closed. We had a really great time and I was SO sad to see her go.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty boring. Class every day, terrible internet since all the regular UAP students are back, same 'ole bad food. Until last Thursday, when we had Thursday-the following Tuesday off for Pascua (Easter), Tuesday was some random Argentine holiday so we also had Monday off. I'm still struggling in Grammar but I think I'm slowing getting those verbs. We shall see.

Tomorrow is my birthday, yay!!!, and we're leaving for Brazil in the evening. We'll be there till 2am on Thursday morning when we leave the hotel to catch our plane. Tomorrow, my roommate and her friends have apparently planned some kind of birthday party. I remember the "party" we had for a boy in highschool when we went to Brazil, it involved throwing handfuls of flour at him. Hopefully that won't happen tomorrow.

The week after we get from Brazil we have mid-terms, so I won't have as much time to live it up in Brazil as I'd hoped. Gotta get my study on while I'm there :p. There are 6 weeks of class left (after Brazil), 1 week for  mid-terms, and many of my finals are the week before the "final week" so then I really only have 5 weeks until my finals start and I need to pack for home!!! Yay!!! :)

My Spanish is getting better. My one roommate and I (the one that has the party) have conversations, real ones; I have to refer to my dictionary A LOT, but we get along pretty well. She corrects me when I'm wrong but it's a lot nicer than when my other roommates would correct me.

Anyway, that is all to report for now. See you all in about a month!

90 Days and Counting

Today marks a rather important day in my stay here. I have 90 days left in this country. How did I choose to celebrate? I went  to a local restaurant with a friend, ordered coffee, and hung out for a little bit. It's not much, but it was the best I could do here. Next week is finals, which is going to be stressful, so I took some time out today to relax. Tomorrow I need to buy the bus tickets for me and Megan that will get us TO Buenos Aires. I also need to find us hostels and book them. And I need to study. Tomorrow I will also be reading a children's easier reader version of  "The Lorax" to my mom's kids. I translated the book into Spanish. Don't start thinking I've gotten fluent suddenly. It's a very easy book so it was mostly words that I already knew before I got here. Tomorrow is "Read Across America" day and so we will literally be reading across America. It should be fun.

Anyway, I'm going to continue the "tranquila" today and watch a little bit of a movie or something before my class.

Tata for now.

Peru and a Bit More

Hello everyone,

Very sorry for the delay in the postings. I've been meaning to write something on here the last couple of days but I've been preoccupied.

3 weeks ago was midterms. I think I did well on pretty much everything. There's still one class I haven't seen the results for yet. Grammar I did bad on. Right now my overall grade in that class is hovering around a 76%. Not good. I'm pretty upset about that but unfortunately I keep messing up on my quizzes so the grade isn't coming back up.

2 weeks ago we went to Peru. Of course it was the 6 hrs by bus to the airport in Buenos Aires, then wait for our plane, 4 hrs to Lima, 1 hr to Cusco, and then we were there. Cusco is at a very high altitude so we had to becareful to not do too much or we could get altitude sickness. Our leaders kept telling us "tranquilos! no comen mucho. no corren. tranquilos!" Basically, chill out. Don't eat a lot. Don't run around. Just chill or you'll get sick. A bunch of people did end up getting sick. The first day we were there we just rested and tried to adjust to the altitude. THe next day we went on a tour of Cusco. We saw a huge indoor market that literally sold everything: clothes, souvenirs, flowers, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, bread, meat. And by meat I mean a whole pig carcass and you get to pick what you want to take home. The meat sections were pretty gross. Lots of dead things, not my idea of fun. We went to the biggest catholic cathedral in South America and we also saw where there was an Incan temple that had been turned into some sort of convent thing for Catholics. It was a museum of the Incan temple and connected to it was the Catholic stuff.
The next day we got up epically early to go to Machu Picchu. We drove 2 hours and then got on a 1.5 hour train ride up to Machu Picchu. From the base town we took a little bus up to the actual site. We didnt have very long there so it was rushed and I wanted to take pictures so I didn't learn much. It was either listen to our guide and translate what he said in my head or take pictures. I took lots of pictures.
The next day we left for Lima. We had a 8 hour layover or soemthing silly so they took us to a mall. That mall was MUCH better thna the malls I went to in Buenos Aires. Lima had a lot more American stuff: Dominos, Pizza Hut, and Papa Johns, KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks, Chili's, TGI Fridays. Mostly I just noticed the food places. But I did recognize a few of the store names, mostly high end clothing stuff that I've heard of an don't actually own. I got a massage there.
On the plane back to BA I got sick. It wasn't fun. I was sick all that weekend. We landed in BA around 10 am on Friday. Our bus was late so we had to wait. Then when we got to the mall to get lunch on our way back to the UAP the AC in the bus died so we had to wait 3 hours for a new bus. We didnt leave BA until almost 4 pm which meant we weren't gonna get back to the UAP until 9:30 almost 10 pm. It was a long day.

Last week was pleasant. We had a holiday on Wednesday which I used rather productively. Next week is Finals for this quarter and on March 8th I'll be meeting Megan in BA for Spring Break. This Thursday marks 90 days until I come home.
Between being a little stressed about finals, annoyed about my grammar grade, and trying to prepare everything for Spring Break I'm definitely ready to go home. There are 5 students leaving at the end of this quarter. I kind of wish I was going with them but I'm not so I shall have to press on.
Hopefully lunch is worth eeating today, I didn't eat dinner last night because it was not good and the cereal was stale.

Halfway Down a Waterfall

Well my loverly readers, lot's has happened since the last time I posted. Last week (Jan 19) was exactly halfway through this school year. It's been 19 weeks of 36 and there's still a lot to do between now and the end of May.

The most exciting thing in the last two weeks has been our trip to Iguazu Falls (pictures coming soon). We left at 11 pm on January 19 and arrived in Misiones (northern province literally squished between Brazil and Paraguay) around 3pm the following day. It was a little more than 15 hours there. I slept a little but it was pretty uncomfortable so I took a nap before dinner once we arrived at our hotel. Monday we spent the entire day walking around the falls.

Iguazu Falls is off the Uruguay River and is split between Brazil and Argentina, similar to how Niagra Falls is between Canada and America. It was really pretty. The first thing we did was walk/ride a mini train up to La Garganta del Diablo (the Devil's Throat). It's a gorgeous view of the biggest section of the waterfalls, you can see the Brazilian viewing area from there as well.
We ate lunch at the park's restaurant, La Selva, which was an AMAZING buffet. It was so good, I ate SO much food.
After lunch we walked A LOT. There are paths that allow you to view the falls from various view points. We walked through all the paths for quite a while, taking pictures. Finally we got to the bottom and then realized we had to climb down a billion stairs to where we were going to get on a boat.
Have you head of Maid of the Mist? It's a tour boat company that takes you into Niagra Falls. These boats are not like the ones at Niagra. They are smaller and the drivers take you MUCH closer to the water. We were drenched.
After boating around for a little bit, chancing some pictures when the spray wasn't too much, the driver drove us down stream to where we got out. We dried off, I changed my shoes, some of the group changed clothes, and then we climbed up a bunch of stairs to where we went on a "safari."
Personally, I thought the safari was pretty lame. We were in the rain forest of Argentina so it would make sense to have a safari and see some animals right? Wrong. We saw giant spiders and that's it. Actually, that's not entirely true, the guide pointed out a giant tree that's now protected by law and we saw a toucan when we were unloading. All in all it was a really gorgeous experience. The weather wasn't too hot or humid, it didnt rain at all while we were there. There was LOTS of walking but it was worth it.
Megan is coming in March to visit me during my spring break. She's wanting to go to the falls and I'm looking forward to going back and being able to take better pictures with my nicer camera. I took a really cheap point and shoot camera with me because i wasn't sure if I'd be able to protect my nice camera when we went on the boat ride. Now that I know how everything works and that we get waterproof bags I'm more comfortable taking it with me.

In 2 weeks we have midterms, in three weeks we're going to Peru. This quarter is already pretty much half over. And we have a feriado (holiday) next Thursday. :-)

Grades and Quarter Numero 2

Well, I finally have all my grades from last quarter. I got A's in Grammar, Composition, Geography, Folklore, Current Events, and History. I got A-'s in Conversation, Bible, and Orthography. *Go Me*

This quarter I'm taking Advanced Grammar, Conversation, and Composition. I'm also taking Phonetics, Translation (ooohhh fun!) Folklore, Bible, and Geography.

Tomorrow is my first day of class this quarter. I don't have class till 10:30 am so that will be a nice way to ease into the quarter. I actually really like my schedule this quarter. Monday I have class from 8:30 am till 10:30 am (Grammar) and then Folklore at 2:30 pm until 4:30. Tuesday I have Conversation at 10:30 am till 12:30, Phonetics at 1:30pm ad then Translation from 5:30-7:30 pm. Wednesday is Grammar at 10:30 until 12:30 and then Bible at 3:30-5:30. Thursday is Composition at 10:30 and then geography at 2:30-4:30. Friday I don't have any classes (yay!!) but there are ACA meetings at 10:30 am (as announced) so some days I will have to be a normal human in the morning and other days I won't.

That's about the run down for this quarter. In a few weeks (we'll probably find out when this Friday in the meeting) we will be going to Iguazu Falls. The falls are in the north in a province called Misiones. It's squished between Paraguay and Brazil. From what I've seen in pictures, it's really pretty. It better be, since Megan wants to go up there when she comes to visit in March. At the end of February, the ACA program takes us up to Peru and to Machu Picchu (this is basically THE trip that convinced me to come down here and the one I've been looking forward to this whole time). March is Spring Break (or fall break depending on which season you choose to call it by) and then in April is our trip to Rio de Janiero. I have two more quarters, 4.5 months, and lots to learn between now and the end of May. It seems like a long time but I know it will fly by and instead of wanting time to go faster--so I can go home--I will be wanting everything to slow down before I head back to the States. It's all about perspective I suppose.

Happy New Year everyone!

__----Travels to date: # of countries- 2  (Uruguay, Argentina)