Buenos Aires again and More

I apologize to you all for having made my last post so incredibly long! I wish that I had had time to write two separate accounts of the trips. But with only two days in between each trip, that made it impossible. I have not been as good about writing in my blog as I would like either; I hope that those of you who have been following haven’t been too anxious for another update. Well once again I have another trip to talk about, it seems like all I have been doing is traveling from one place to another. But I’m done for now, well or at least until I go to Mendoza and Salta with the rest of the group.

On the 28th of May I headed back to Buenos Aires. There were several things that I was very excited to see that I was unable to see the first time I visited. I wanted to go to Teatro Colon, and the San Telmo Feria (market). I was also excited to visit a couple friends. Devin was in Buenos Aires with his parents, so I meet up with them on Friday night for dinner. After dinner, we walked down to the Obelisco and had a glass of wine alongside the widest street in the world. We were sitting outside but it started sprinkling so we went inside. Looking back, this was just (Think what this word is!!!) for what was to come.

Devin and I were staying at Hostel Suites Florida again and his parents were staying at a hotel in Recoleta (long story short they were supposed to be staying closer); so on Saturday we meet at the Plaza de Mayo which was only 6 or 8 blocks from where we were staying. It was raining when we left the hostel. Luckily there was a guy selling umbrellas right beside the hostel, so we both bought an umbrella and where on our way. It wasn’t raining real heavy it was more of a steady rain, but there were large puddles everywhere. I like the rain so this didn’t really bother me; however, it did put a damper on our plans. We found plenty to do though and found some souvenirs for Devin’s parents to take back; more importantly we found some yerba mate for them to take back.

After going back to their hotel and saying goodbye, Devin and I headed back to the Hostel. I decided that I wanted to stop by Teatro Colon on my way back so I could buy tickets for a tour the next day. We got off the subte (subway) and walked two blocks to the theater. When I asked about tours I was devastated to hear that there were no tours! How could this be? I had checked online to make sure that there were tours. They had prices, weekly schedules, the time the tour took, they had everything posted online, and to top it all off they had the grand opening on the 24th of May I had watched it on T.V. with my own eyes! So how could they not have tours? I was simply told that the internet was wrong and that there will be no tours until July. I was pretty upset, but then I just thought…well its Argentina. I feel like this goes well with one of my other posts. Someone in the group was working on a book with stories like these; I’ll let you know when it is published.

So after finding out this bad news we headed back to the hostel. By the time we had got back, we were both soaked from having walked in the rain all day and we were pretty tired too. But I had plans, so I couldn’t rest. This is ok though, because I had plans to go and meet another friend for coffee. I met up with Lillí Villí at Café Tortoni. First of all Lillí is a friend from Simpson who is from Buenos Aires. She was the full bright at Simpson this year for Spanish; which means she worked kind of like a teacher’s assistant. She ran a program at Simpson called Spanish table, where I would go and could speak entirely in Spanish for an hour a week to improve my language skills. This helped me a lot, and I’m really grateful that I got to do it before coming to Argentina. Second Café Tortoni is the most famous coffee shop in Buenos Aires, it is where many of the famous people and the greatest minds of Argentina would go and converse, and well drink coffee. It is a very nice Café!

Lillí and I talked for quite some time before we had to part ways. I would have loved to stay and chat longer, but I had to get back to the hostel for another important chat. I had a Skype date set up with the family back home, because it was my sister’s graduation party. So I got back to the hostel and called home. Unfortunately, it was extremely loud in the lobby and of course that is the only place that there was Wi-Fi. So with the background noise I couldn’t hear hardly anything that they were saying, and they could hear nothing that I said. But I got to say hi to a few people and most importantly I got to congratulate Carrie on her achievement. This is one of those moments that I really wish I could have been back in Iowa, I felt really bad about missing it. But I was there in heart!

After trying everything to make Skype work better I finally gave up and Devin and I went to go get dinner. We hit up an old favorite “Solo Empanadas.” Can you guess what they make? Well let me tell you, they make “Only Empanadas.” We ate back at the hostel and sat around for awhile after dinner trying to figure out what we were going to do that night since it was still raining and we were both really tired. We ended up playing several games of pool, then going to bed.

We got up fairly early Sunday Morning and headed to the San Telmo feria (market). Luckily the rain quit sometime the night before. I say luckily because the forecast called for more rain on Sunday (this would have caused the feria to close). We really felt like God had blessed us on Sunday because not only was it not raining, but the sun was out, there was a slight breeze, and we found a TON of gifts for family and friends! The market was really cool. It was massive, that’s really the only way to describe it. There were so many different things too look at; artesian jewelry, clothes, paintings, and crafts, there were also antiques and all kinds of shirt shops with everything Argentina you need to get ready for the world cup. We walked forever and ended up walking all the way back to the Plaza de Mayo. After the long walk and acquiring lots of good stuff we were both ready to head back. We got all our stuff packed up at the hostel and headed to the bus station.

Our bus trip was nice; it only takes about 4 hours to travel from Buenos Aires to Rosario. So this trip was much shorter than the last several trips that I have taken. Even though I didn’t get to go to Teatro Colon I did have a really good weekend. It was nice to go back to Buenos Aires and see some of the sites again, and get some gift shopping done (which I still have finish up). And it was really nice to visit with some good friends!

When I got back to Rosario I discovered that I was once again without internet. It’s been kind of a struggle with the internet as it goes out on occasion and doesn’t return for days at a time. It is very odd. My host mom has worked really hard to get the company to work on it and make it work, but there just isn’t good service for these kinds of things in Argentina. They come when they want to and it may be weeks before they get to you. So on Monday I went into UCEL to work on homework and check my email. While I was in there I meet up with some friends and while we were talking we realized that it was now the 1st of June.

This really hit me! I have been having such a great time here in Argentina that finding out that it’s already June was such as surprise because it means that I don’t have that much time left here. Now I really have mixed feelings. I have been having such a good time that I don’t want it to end, and I really like this city so I don’t want to leave. But, at the same time I’m excited to see my family and friends back home. I have been able to talk to family on Skype fairly regularly, but it’s just not the same. I am also excited to have some good `ol fashion Iowa cooking! But I know that I will miss this place.

Last week was a pretty normal week. I had a lot of homework it seemed like but I still found time to hang out with old friends and make new ones. A couple weeks prior a new group of students from the United States arrived at UCEL. They came down for a three week intensive Spanish program. Wow, am I glad I didn’t do this! I can’t imagine how hard it would be to squeeze in so much knowledge in such a small amount of time. I started the weekend a little early last week. After English class on Thursday night, I went out with a huge group of people including Argentine students, U.S. students, and even the English teacher. It was a very interesting night, we had drinks and stayed out pretty late considering that I had class the next morning. Friday night I went out again. This time though I went out for real, Argentina style that is. We started the night at a bar and were there until around 2 AM when we headed to the boliche (dance club). We were there until 6 AM when the club closed. Then the search for a taxi was on. We looked and looked for taxi’s but couldn’t find any. We ended up walking a long way before we found one. And I ended up getting home sometime after 7 o’clock in the morning. It was a really fun night!

I spent the rest of my weekend studying since now I’m getting weighted down by homework, projects, and have all of my finals to study for. This week is the last week before finals and in total I had 3 projects to do. I have already finished two of the projects and gave the presentations for them. I have one more that is due tomorrow. I have been really putting this one off, and still haven’t completed it. I’m not concerned though I think it will be fairly easy, and I really wanted to get another post up on my blog before the chaos of my finals start next week.

Well I guess that’s about it, so maybe I should start on my project….maybe. I hope to get another post up, but please be patient as I will be very busy this coming week. After finishing all of my finals on Thursday afternoon I head out for Mendoza that night. So I will get a post up as soon as I can.