¿Quieres ir al Argentina mañana?

For those of you who don't speak fluent spanglish like I do, the title says, "Do you weant to go to Argentina tomorrow?"

A question to which I said yes.

It was on Thursday that the question was asked, so on Friday right after class (class being a trip to a museum), I boarded a bus with 5 other kids and we took off for Argentina.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Just in case you aren't familiar with South American geography (which many aren't), Chile and Argentina are seperated by the Andes mountains, over which we drove. Beautiful. These were the first mountain-mountains that I've seen. America has mountains, but these were mountains. Breathtaking.

They looked just like mountains are supposed to look. Huge, grand, majestic, snowy. The trip was worth it just for the drive. As an extra bonus, though, I got to enjoy Argentina.

We went to Mendoza, which is a city in Western Argentina. The first night we just hung out and explored a bit, but we were all pretty tired from the trip and crashed in our 6 person room pretty early. I love sharing a room. I think that's something I'm missing right now, so sharing a room again (especially with 5 other people) was awesome.

The next morning we rose early to go track down Argentinian jerseys before the game. This was absolutely necessary because I (and another one of my travel companions) look German. Probably because I am German. But I had to get something to show my allegience. Screw heritage.

So after buying jerseys, we watched the game at a cool little bar/resturant thingy. We ordered a "missle," which is a HUGE thing of beer shaped like a missle with a tap at the bottom. It was pretty cool looking. I tried a bit, but I don't think beer is for me.

(sorry, I'm going to start rushing now. No more details. I have to leave soon for my DANCE CLASS. Life is good.)

Then we went to a supermarket, bought food, and made it in our hostel.

Then we went wine tasting and I discovered that a) I'm a whimp about alcohol and b) I'm not a wine person.

A was discovered because every time they gave us a taste of wine, they filled up our glass about 1/4 of the way. And out of 4 tries, I didn't finish a single taste. Wait, that's not true. I think I finished the last one.

B was discovered because I didn't really like it. Pretty simple.

Then we were all exhaousted, so we went back to the hostel and went to sleep.

Again, fun sleeping in the same room.

We woke up around 9:00pm and got ready for dinner (that's normal down here).

We went to an AMAZING all you can eat buffet. I had three plates full of food and 2 plates of dessert and didn't finish a single one of them. Wasteful, I know. But there was so much that I wanted to try! Really, they had EVERYTHING. From dead pigs hanging by their feet (sorry vegetarians) to vegetairian sushi. And octopus legs. Weird.

After that, we went out on the town. We ended up at a little bar where I had my first drink all to myself. Up until then, I've tried bits of other people's, but that day I ordered one for me.

Sex on the beach.

So good.

It took me a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to finish it. I nursed that one drink for a good 4-5 hours. It made me laugh. Made my friends laugh too. I have such great friends here. They totallyt accept me for my non-alcohol-y-ness. They're actually quite amused by it, as am I. It was fun to try something new.

When we left the bar, we went to a playground and played for a bit. Stupid america gets rid of all the fun playground equiptment, but luckily they are alive and well in Argentina.

We got home around 4am and went to sleep. Woke up early the next morning to get back on the bus.

Another beautiful bus ride. But I slept for most of it.

Cool things about Argentina (and Mendoza in particular):
-the "cute" country colors
-cheap
-beautiful parks
-really cool wineries (even though i may not be a fan of the wine)
-nice people
-death sidewalks (Some people might put this in a "cons" part, but I thought it was quite amusing. There were trenches on the steet side of sidewalks that were a good 3-4 feet deep. You could easily fall in, especially since the rest of the sidewalk is broken and uneven, just begging you to trip).
-fresh air


A couple more things before I go:
1) I am definitley the daughter of my parents. In my spanish class, we were learning about different rooms and furniture and all that good stuff in español, and in our text book there were a couple plans for house layouts. They were horrible. I was so distraced trying to remodel the houses in my head that I barely learned anything we were supposed to be learning.
2) You can't tell the difference between where the clouds end and the smog begines here. I tell myself that it's all clouds. That fog is what fills the basin that is Santiago. But my inability to take a deep, clean breath and the dryness of my eyes tell me differently. But I'm going to stay in denial for a bit more. Besides, it's raining now, so tomorrow (or whever it stops raining) will be "fog" free.

That's it for now. I've got to run to my dance class. It starts in 24 minutes, I have to take the train and then walk a bit, AND I'm starving.

Chiao!

P.S. Stuart, I have no idea what happened with skype. Lame. Let's keep trying though, okay?