last day of argentina

ahhhh. only a few more hours left in buenos aires. amber, jud, and geoffrey left this morning to go on to their own adventures (brazil, bariloche (southern argentina), and somewhere else, respectively), so we had some sad goodbyes last night and this morning. just finished packing, my suitcase is huge, and just killing time to when we meet up at 6:30pm to go to the airport. i believe our flight leaves around 9ish, arriving in houston texas at 6:15am, and getting home in atascadero much much later that night (houston to denver to LA to home).

would love to describe what this semester has meant to me, but its hard. i have made some amazing friendships and experienced and seen more in the last 3.5 months than the majority of people see in their lifetimes. its sad to have this time in my life end, but i feel blessed to have had the opportunity to have traveled, lived, and studied in latin america.

this past week has been eventful. had a spanish final on wednesday and turned in 5 essays (all in spanish) to my politics class. pretty sure i got an A in both classes so excited about that. last few nights have been spent just spending time with my friends from this program. its been great. but i'm tired, because this morning i got home at 4, saturday morning at 6, friday morning at 6, and thursday morning relatively late also. not much sleep, but well worth it. so many good memories.

well, this should be it for my blog. for those of you who stuck with me through this trip, hope my posts have been informative and you enjoyed the pictures. i'll probably start blogging again when i go to europe this summer, so i'll make sure your in the know when the time comes.

for friends and family in california, see you tomorrow. for my east coast peeps, i'll be in PA on the 7th (or 8th, can't remember), but classes start jan.9th so i'll for sure see you then.

chau.

photos

so i forgot to mention in my last blog but me, camilo, and jessica went to this place called tierra santo (holy land). it is a theme park on the outskirts of buenos aires that is biblically themed. really really weird. we took a ton of weird crazy photos (as you will see), it almost felt wrong, but it was just too weird.

me and jesus.
i obviously fit really well

it kept getting wierder. they had ghandi's house, martin luther's house, and mother teresa's also.


giant jesus. with giant buggers.

the holy land

we couldn't help ourselves

pics from uruguay

one more week. crazy.

well, it's sunday afternoon and i've got one week left in latin america. definitely going to miss it. looking back on every country, i think mexico was my favorite. everything about it was awesome. the food, the people, the music, salsa, the small town feel of guanajuato, it was all great. i loved peru but lima was pretty ugly. argentina has been fun but it doesn't feel at all like latin america. everyone else is white like me just they speak better spanish. but the steak and empanadas here are amazing.

last night my house mom cooked up some carne asade de la parillla. meat from the grill. i think it was the reddest meat i've ever eaten but it was so good. i had so many pieces. but i usually don't feel that bad eating a ton at dinner because breakfast consists of two pieces of toast and some fruit, and lunch i'm on my own so it usually consists of a $2 sandwhich in the university cafeteria. breakfast is at 9am, lunch at 1pm, and dinner around 9pm.

plans for this week. only three days left of school (mon, tues, wed) but they are going to be busy. we have a written/oral final in spanish and my politics class i have to write 6 essays (finished one, it was about U.S. intervention in the mexican revolution from 1910-1917) and my other ones involve such topics as the history of the formation of states (countries) in latin america, 4 interpretationes of classic populismo and how it relates to neopopulism (must have fazed out during this part of class, don't remember any of it, but you've got to the love the internet, comes in handy for times like these), and the effects of terrorism on the governments of latin america. yeah!!!! but once wednesday is over, i have no plans until my flight leaves sunday night. i think the rest of my group plans on being drunk those four days and not sleeping, but i plan on just not sleeping. should be fun. i'll be nice and ready for the 10ish hour flight from buenos aires to texas.

in case any of you are wondering, here are the classes i will be taking this spring at messiah:
applied statistics for management, decision making tools for management, business law, an honors class called personal narrative, pluralist world (sounds like a girly touchy feely class to me, but i have to take it to graduate, so let the sharing of emotions begin), music through piano (basic general education music credit, it was this or music through recorder) and judaism (which i'm really looking forward to, find out some information about the jewish history on my mother's side).

one more week. will try and steal some more photos from my friends to share with all y'all.

this is during our 3hr boat trip from uruguay to argentina. if you hadn't noticed, it spells "hi"


http://messiah.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034213&l=03029&id=55303386
another photo album with photos from all three countries

!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