!que barbaro¡

mcdonalds in buenos aires. it just never goes away.
some of my lady friends in northern peru

group photo in macchu piccu
our small small bus that we spent at least 50 hours in

photo from teotihuacan
one of the many subte (subway) stations in BsAs (buenos aires). costs about 15-20cents to use the subway.

some cool stuff at a street vendor in argentina
photo from mexico. this one is for you dad.

9 de julio.
me at some cool ruins somewhere in northern peru
sunset in peru on our way back to lima

sweet paintings in plaza de mayo. saw a dude painting these with spray paint. pretty impressive.

at the obelisk on avenue 9 de julio. widest avenue in the world

nov.29th. it is almost december. this semester has flown by. have had an amazing experience so far but ready to be home for awhile and be back at messiah.

today jud and i walked around the avenue 9 de julio, largest avenue in the world. the arquitecture was awesome and the weather was beautiful, so today was alot of fun. Most days after class I go to the gym, do homework, eat dinner, and sleep. Not incredibly exciting but gets the job done. Not sure what I am going to do tomorrow but going to uruguay on saturday and hopefully a futbol game at La Boca on sunday. should be nuts.

hi

casa rosa. serves the same purpose as the white house. part of the plaza de mayo.

northern argentina
more photos of the falls
a girl in our group broke a bone in her foot in peru and i stole her wheelchair for awhile. such a nice boy.
i think the tall dude in the background is me. not sure.
this is a crazy cemetary in a part of town called recoleta. all the tombs are this big and it feels like your walking through a city. we also saw eva peron's grave here.
o crazy street performers.
more tombs shots


ruins we saw in northern argentina

its saturday afternoon. and due the fact i should be in el tigre right now i shouldn't be writing this. but due to my amazing directional capabilities, i thought we were meeting at the subway station, not the bus station across town. darn. so jud and I have passed the day so far eating pizza and watching movies. over all not that bad. we are going to the gym soon then who knows after that.

last few nights i've experienced some of buenos aires´ vida nocturna (night life). one morning jud and I got back around 3 am and the next day our host mom made fun of us cause that usually when the parties get started here. two nights ago i went to a hip-hop club till about 5am and definitely felt out of place there, not really my style of music. last night jud and i went to a salsa club that was pretty cool and ended up getting home around 6 when it was light out. in order to survive in this crazy lifestyle, we have learned to take naps after dinner from about 9-12. helps a ton.

my time is running out so will update when something exciting happens. have 6hours of class monday, tuesday and wednesday then next weekend we are going to uruguay for a day or two. sweet.

small world

so the other day i was looking at a map of buenos aires for things to do, and i came across a section of town called barrio chino aka chinese neighborhood. and since i didn't have class today, i decided to check it out. after a 2 minute subte (subway) ride and a 20min walk, i was in barrio chino. It was only about 2 square blocks in size, but it was fun to see chinese characters everywhere and hear chinese spoken around me. I got there around lunch time, so decided to eat there. It was awesome. I got chicken fried rice pretty much exactly as i had it in china. way good times. another cool thing is i found barrio chino on an english map, asked for directions in spanish, and once at the restaurant ordered my food, said hello, goodbye, and thank you and asked for chopsticks all in chinese. interesting experience.

today is thanksgiving. wish i was home because this is the third thanksgiving i'll be away from home (first in conneticut, 2nd in beijing, china, and third in buenos aires). Our program is putting on a dinner for us tonight, so rumor has it there will be turkey. holla.

due to the fact i only have class on monday, tuesday and wednesday, and have a few open nights this week, will probably be checking out the local nightlife. supposedly there is a salsa club near by so we are going to try and find that soon. last night we had a tango class, and i got there late but picked up the basic basic step pretty fast. totally different from salsa, but fun.

saturday we are going to visit a part of argentina called el tigre. not sure what it consists of but i think it is a coastal town up north. should be interesing.

iguazu

iguazu falls. amazing.

thursday night around 7pm about 35 of us (a mix of my program and the semester program here in argentina) hopped on a bus to go to northern argentina. and this wasn't your regular bus. it had HUGE seats, a ton of leg room and this little dealy that folded down to make a bed. we where also served dinner and breakfast. friday morning we arrived at some ruins of a church built by some jesuit priests, and allow they were pretty cool, i feel like i've seen so many ruins they all are starting to look the same. after the ruins we headed off to a estacion, which is like a little resort area. they had a pool, a tennis court, a volleyball net and a bunch of areas to hang out. we were there from around 11 to 5. i got to play tennis for awhile, good times, and ate amazing grilled beef, chicken, sausage, and all sorts of traditional goodness. After our time spent there we drove to our hotel which was about 30mins away from the falls and slept all night.

saturday. oh my goodness. as you can see by the photos in my previous blog iguazu falls are amazing. i believe they are the widest falls in the world, aka they go on forever. we spent all day saturday visiting different parts of the falls, and we even took a boat that took us right underneath some of the falls. we got drenched but it was an amazing experience.
we also had the chance to go to the spot where the border of argentina, brazil, and paraguay meet, so that was cool. sunday we slept in then caught a plane back to buenos aires.



couple differences i've noticed about argentinian customs:
-the greeting and farewell kiss between men and women is now customary between men. kinda awkward.
-i now am able to put my toilet paper in a toilet rather than a trash can. love it.
-portenos (people of the port, or people of buenos aires) are extremely fit. they hardly eat anything for breakfast and lunch and there is a gym on every block.

alright. i'm off to go eat lunch and then go to my politics class. will update more later.

finally. photos.

a pic of the nazca lines.
amazing
other section of the falls


jud
la garganta. the throat
jud, tanner, and myself
at iguazu falls. but only a small section of it.

our driver
this is how we got from nazca to ica. this car was pretty beat up. also called "la poderosa" the powerful

tanner, me, jud, and michael gettin ready to take off.
tanner.
some of the nazca lines. this is a hummingbird
view out of the bus on the way to ica, peru.
part of the drive to the beaches in northern peru

i'm in buenos aires. nuts.

oh my goodness. this city rocks.

so as i write this i am concluding my second day in argentina. and so far, i really really like it here. my family is awesome. i am with virginia and vicente, a retired couple in their 70's who are awesome and have been hosting students for a long time. we are in a decently sized apartment in the belgrano district and about a 10min walk from school. i have my own room, which is nice, and pretty comfortable lodgings. we had are first day of classes today and we had a test in order to place us in the correct language level, and for some odd reason they put me in advanced. so i have advanced conversation and composition (scared about the writing part, i'm terrible at that) from 10am to 1pm and latin american political systems from 2 to 5pm. i only have class on monday, tuesday, and wednesday. yeahh. spanish is going to be tough, we already have a 15min presentation next week without any type of notes, definitely have to prepare for this one. the politics teacher is really hard to understand and his writing is almost eligible, so that make it rough, but i believe the material will be interesting.

the language here is definitely a change. the accent is hard to get used to but i really like it. the "y" are pronounced like "sh" and the double l ("ll") are now "j". for example: yo (I) is now pronounced like "show" and lluvia (rain) is know (roughly) pronounced like "jew-via" when it was "you-via". tough to get used to, but awesome.

everything here has a european flavor to it. the majority of the people here are white (italian, german, europian heritage) the only exception is that spanish is spoken in place of english. i am definitely not the minority anymore. and there are a lot of tall women, so life is good.

something crazy about this city is the night life. supposedly the nightlife picks up around 3 in the morning and ends around 6-7am. luckily for me i only have class three days a week. so my four day weekends are going to be nuts. however, this weekend we are going to visit the iguazu falls in northern argentina (right on the border with brazil). i know we have two more planned trips on top of this one, but they are only day trips. one to a city in northern argentina called el tigre and the other trip we are taking a 45min ferry ride to a city in uruguay, which i'm really looking forward too.

well, my hour on alloted internet time is running out. would love to hear from all y'all. shoot me an email sometime: ss1307@messiah.edu

alright, later.

spontaneous trip

so. halfway through my last class thursday a couple buddies of mine mentioned that they were going south to see the nazca lines (we didn't have school on friday and we leave today at 8:30pm, so plenty of time). and not having anything planned, i figured why not? after lunch we jumped on a bus to ica (four hours south) then another bus to nazca (2 more hours) and got there around 11. we didn't have any place to stay but some dude walked up to us and started telling us about his hotel. we ended paying 15 soles (5 bucks) per person to stay there. we had a hotel recommened to us but we didn't find it till later and it ended up being 25bucks a person. we got a sweet deal.

friday morning we headed over to an airport and jumped on a little prop plane, a 6 seater, and flew over the lines. nazca is in the middle of the desert and the lines are these giant carvings that were made about 1000 yrs ago or so. seeing as my camera is broke i have no photos, but i will soon being stealing them from my buddies. the carvings include a monkey, condor, parrot, hummingbird, and more. i think about 16 total. it was awesome. after that we had lunch, and caught the buses back home. last night we had a go-away party thingy where we went to a club where they had these people doing traditional dances. pretty cool.

as of now i'm getting all my stuff together and trying to get organized for my flight to argentina tonight. so my next post will be about argentina. awesome!!!

one more week

so here is a quick recap of the last few weeks:

macchu piccu trip. left thursday morning by plane. after arriving in the mountains we took about a two hour hike to some ruins. had a free afternoon. friday we went to macchu piccu which was awesome. after touring around in the ruins some of us took a 40 minute hike up to the sun gate, which gives a spectacular view and is the end of the inca trail. saturday morning we went to some more ruins and spent the night in cusco, where me and a few buddies saw a crazy fireworks show. sunday flew home after some weather delays in the airport.

this wednesday (oct. 31), we took off in a really small bus to northern peru. left around 6:30pm and arrived in trujillo around 2ish. thursday morning was spent at the beach, were the water wasn't cold at all but really couldn't go in due ton of rocks. but that didn't stop me from rolling around in the shorebreak. in the afternoon we did some ocean kayaking on traditional canoes, and then we visited some 900 year old ruins that were pretty interesting. but since we have seen so many ruins in the last few weeks a few sayings have become popular within my group: no mas ruinas (no more ruins) and i'm ruined out. anyways, friday we drove through chiclayo and went to a musuem that had a ton of gold artifacts. we then continued on to piura and mancura, beaches up in way northern peru. spent the night there and then spent all of saturday at mancura, bodysurfing and having a blast in the sun. there was also some women's world surfing competition going on, so watched that for awhile, but the waves were terrible so they couldn't do much. and then sunday rolled along. we left our hotel at 8:30am and i got home at 4:20am monday morning. long long long bus ride.

this trip to the beaches up north was an included free trip, but we were informed beforehand that we had to pay for all our meals, which caused a long of complaining. but being mr. frugal, me and a couple buddies deviated from the nicer restaurants and enjoyed fine peruvian cuisine in sketchy hole in the walls. however, my meals ranged from $1-2. not bad i must say. and the food rocked.

plans for this week:
wednesday i have a presentation in spanish and I am doing it on Fujimori (peru´s president from 1990-2000). thursday i have a test, shouldn't be too bad. friday no school. saturday night flying out to argentina.

oh yeah, my camera is malfunctioning. brand new. argggh. guess i had some sand in my pocket. its weird though, i took a few photos. turned it off. then turned it back on 2 minutes later to look at the photos and the lense is going all wack on me. bummer. will try and fix but who knows. if not i'm buying a bunch of disposables. allright!!

it is weird to think that i have is a week left in peru. i've really enjoyed my time here and have had the chance to explore a huge portion of the country. something i've really enjoyed here is conversing with my taxi drivers. to get anywhere in this giant city takes at least 25 minutes, and i'll usually take a taxi 2-5 times a weeks, so i do what i can to strike up a conversation, not only is this good spanish practice, but i've learned alot. here are some brief stories i've encounter:
-retired man who spent 25yrs in a marketing firm who is now driving a taxi to pass the time
-25 year guy who is married with a 2 yr old driving to make ends meet
-man who owned a electronics store that went under due to cheap imports/knockoffs from china/elsewhere and is now driving a taxi and running a grocery store out of his home
-man who drove a bus in the public transportation system but is now driving a taxi because it offers better hours and isn't as stressful
-another guy was my age and was a surfer/pothead who was super hard to understand due to all the slang he used.
-another taxi driver who worked in the US as a janitor but returned to peru because it was to hard to get by in the states
-and one of my bus drivers to northern peru has worked in japan for 3 years and is currently married with a 1yr old. enjoys his job, because one, he has a job (hard to find these days), and it allows him to visit all of peru.

so yeah. this experience has been awesome so far. i'm looking forward to what argentina has to offer. i'll be living with Jud again (my roommate from mexico) and we will be living with a retired couple. excited to hear stories about argentina in the old days (watched a movie in my spanish class about part of argentina's history, some of the recent revolutions have had some big impacts on modern day argentina).

well, off to dinner and work on my presentation. hope all is well. enjoying this adventure but looking forward to being home again and back at messiah. chau.