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.