Uruguay Recap

Howdy folks. So last night I got back from 7 nights and 8 full days of traveling throughout Uruguay, the very small country directly across the Rio de la Plata from Argentina (it's to the northeast, more or less). In order to get there, last Saturday my friend Taylor and I took a boat at 9:00AM across the river to a city called Colonia de Sacramento. The trip took three hours and it was a beautiful and sunny morning on the deck of the boat. After a really laid back questioning at Uruguayan customs (the man literally just asked us why we were coming there and we said vacation and that was that) we hopped on a bus and within 15 minutes we were on our way to Montevideo. I have always wanted to go to Montevideo, ever since junior high school Spanish class where you are forced to learn all of the countries in South America, be able to locate them on a map, and identify their capitals. I'm not too sure why but I think I always thought the name was cool because it sounds like the word 'video'. After about 2.5 hours on that bus we got into the bus terminal (3 cruces, or three crosses) in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. The whole bus terminal complex is also a shopping mall and after we bought our bus tickets to continue on to Punta del Diablo that evening we had a two hour layover so we went to the food court and almost jumped out of our skins when we saw the prices at McDonalds. A big mac meal was about 155 pesos Uruguayos, which translates into about (155/20 = $8 US), so still expensive but not as expensive as it appeared to us. We have gotten used to the Argentine peso exchange rate (approximately 4pesos = $1 US) so when we got to Uruguay with Argentine money it was confusing. The exchange rate is about 20 pesos to $1US but if you are paying in Argentine pesos its about 4.5 uruguayos to 1 argentine peso. Moving on to Punta del Diablo.



The view of Buenos Aires as we were pulling out of port.



This is a picture of the beach and how it looked just about all weekend in Punta del Diablo.



Here I am enjoying the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Although the water was surprisingly swim-able and enjoyable.

It was an almost 5 hour bus ride from Montevideo to Punta del Diablo but it was definitely worth it. The town is right along the coast, not far south of Brazil, and it is beautiful! We ended up meeting some really cool people there, seeing a baby seal hanging out on the rocks when we went for an evening stroll, enjoying 1 full day without electricity when the power went out and staying four nights instead of three. We didn't get in Saturday night until after 11PM so we were pretty tired from traveling all day when we did finally get there and spent the first night just heading to bed early rather than taking a nighttime stroll along the beach. We stayed in the hostel (El Diablo Tranquilo, Playa Suites) that I talked about in my last blog post. We ate some great seafood, we hung out on the beach in the sun, and we played with the sea anemones that we all over the beach. There were blue ones and really small scarlet red ones. We kept cracking open mussels and feeding them to the anemones, which was reallllly fun. After four days in Punta del Diablo we decided to head back to Montevideo so early Wednesday morning we hopped on another bus and spent the afternoon/evening and 1 night in Montevideo. Taylor and I booked rooms in a 6 bed room at a hostel but it was such a slow night that we ended up being the only two in our room.



The view of the Montevideo skyline in the background.

We woke up on Thursday and realized that it was Thanksgiving, packed up our stuff, and headed back to Colonia de Sacramento where we met up with our program for our official Thanksgiving celebration. We ate at our program directors bed and breakfast that was a palatial estate. He has a lemon orchard, a pool and is about a ten minute walk from the river beach. The water at the beach was amazing, you could walk out hundreds of yards and have it still be waist deep so the swimming was great, especially for just hanging out and tossing around a football.



Sitting on the deck at my program director's bed and breakfast with Taylor.

We then spent the next two nights in a nice hotel and exploring the city of Colonia which is the oldest city in Uruguay.



Here is a picture of one of the Portuguese cobbled streets. The city was fought over for many years by the Spanish and the Portuguese, due to the fact that it lies right in the disputed region of land distribution when the Americas were first settled.

We spent Thursday eating and having an evening tour of the historical part of the city, where we stayed, and then we headed back to the hotel for a good nights rest. At 8AM the next day Taylor and I got up and went around taking pictures of the city on our own before we met up with a group of friends and took a bus to the beach, where we spent the rest of the afternoon.



After an amazing dinner with our program and getting up early a second day, Taylor and I decided to rent a go-kart/bugy type deal and cruise around the city. We ended up actually leaving Colonia because we were going on the highway but we didnt quite realize until we re-entered the city and saw the welcome sign. It was a fun experience to say the least.



On Saturday evening around 7PM we headed back to the boat terminal and struck out for Buenos Aires once more, after a long week of the intense Uruguay sun and relaxation. Now I have 1 final this Wednesday and then I am on SUMMER VACATION for a little over 3 months!!! I will definitely be keeping you all updated as I travel through Colombia, hopefully Venezuela, Ecuador and the Galapagos, Peru this summer (South American summer) and potentially Brazil, Chile and Bolivia next semester.

If you want to see more of my photos from my trip I put up two Facebook albums and the links to them are:
(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2067983&id=1280460131) for the first album and (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2067981&id=1280460131) for the second album. I hope you enjoy them!

VACAY!

A big hello to all of my avid blog followers, I know I have caused you many frowns in the past few weeks, every time you came to my page and there was NOTHING NEW TO READ! You have had to give up stalking me and my wonderful life and living vicariously through me and start living your own lives, but alas, I have decided to resume my blogging. The period of final papers and final exams has wound down, leaving me with 1 paper, 6 pages in length and 2 weeks to write it. Hence I have no excuse not to update my blog.

Tomorrow morning at 9:30AM Argentina time (6:30AM Midwestern time) I will be embarking on a grand adventure. I am heading to Uruguay for a week. Tomorrow (Saturday) I will arrive by boat in Colonia, Uruguay around 1PM and from there I will head directly to Montevideo (the capital of Uruguay) on a bus. Once in Montevideo my friend Taylor (from upstate New York) and I will need to buy bus tickets to take us further into Uruguay. Our final destination for Saturday night is Punta del Diablo, a beach town along the northeastern coast of Uruguay where there is a hostel run by UW-Madison grads. The translation of the name of the hostel is "The Tranquil Devil: Beach Suites" so it should be a great couple days. We plan on staying there and sunning ourselves until about Tuesday morning, when we will transfer to Cabo Polonio, another beach town about 15km away. You have to enter Cabo Polonio in a horse drawn carriage or on a 4wheeler, you can't use a car to enter the area.



This is a picture of the eastern coast of Uruguay. You can see Punta del Diablo and Cabo Polonio on this map. Look up a world map if you don't know where this country is folks (sigh).



Alright, I included a full map of Uruguay, (note that Punta del Diablo and Cabo Polonio are not marked on this map) but here you can see where Colonia and Montevideo are in relation to the other places I will be staying.

I am pretty stoked for all of this beach time, even though the weather forecast is saying it'll be between 75 and 82 all week, I still think it will be great to relax on the beach, read some books, and sip some piña coladas. After spending Tuesday day and night in Cabo Polonio Taylor and I are planning on heading back to Montevideo for Wednesday day and night. We planned this itinerary because we then have a Thanksgiving celebration in Colonia, Uruguay with our program that commences around 1:30PM Thursday. We will be in Colonia from Thursday morning until Saturday night, when we will return to Buenos Aires by boat.

Too bad none of you will be here for Thanksgiving because we are allowed to bring guests from the United States to Colonia with us FOR FREE!!!!!!!!! (You would have only had to pay for your boat passage which is ~$50 round trip). Also, Taylor has an 8GB memory card for the Canon camera that she had until recently but that got stolen. I am going to buy the memory card from her tomorrow morning, so expect LOTS of photos!!


Love you all <3 Julia

So I kind of stopped writing in my blog, unintentionally. But I did just upload a lot of photos to facebook!

(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2066746&id=1280460131) This first album is called 'Argentina lately' and should give you a glimpse of what I've been up to.

(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2066747&id=1280460131) This second album is called 'The rest of argentina lately" and it should round it out a little more.

Enjoy :)

1 Week in Buenos Aires

Howdy Folks-

So, I last updated you all when I was just getting back from Oktoberfest in Villa General Belgrano, in the province of Córdoba. That was about a week and a half ago, so I'll try to fill in all of the details. Let's just throw it out there that I haven't had a solid 8 hours of sleep any single night since before Oktoberfest, so my life has been pretty chalk-full of great things to do and it's likely I'll accidentally leave a few out.

The 12th-15th of October I spent writing two papers and doing all of the work that I did NOT do while I was drinking beer in Córdoba (understandable, right?) It was mostly school work and staying up late to get things done at the very last minute but it all turned out just fine. A few weeks ago I started volunteering in a place called Hogar de abuelos, which translates to Grandparents Home, and its been pretty fun going there.

The weekend after getting back from Córdoba we did another dinner with our friends from Germany on the Friday night and then I went home rather than going out because I had an early morning obligation. Saturday morning I had an inauguration at 930AM for AIESEC, a student run organization that sets up and sends young adults on paid international internships that can last 6 weeks-18 months. I recently joined the Buenos Aires chapter and everyone in the group is amazing. I spent all Saturday morning with them and then from 2-4PM we had our local committee meeting, so everyone in AIESEC Buenos AIres was there. Afterwards I went to La Plata to hang out with my friends that I had made the weekend before when we were camping in Córdoba. We all met up at Manu, one of the Argentine girl's houses and then we cooked an asado (the BBQ thing) and I learned the basics. Afterwards we headed to a house party that was different from anything I had ever been to before and around 6AM we got back to Marcos's house and the roosters were crowing us to sleep. The first of the two pictures that I've included are of my with Seba, an Argentine friend, the one who taught me how to grill a proper Argentine asado. The second picture is also from Manu's house and its just the majority of the group sitting around the dinner table.




(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=1280460131&aid=2064289) here is the album of photos from the night.

Sunday of that same weekend was Mother's Day in Argentina so we had brunch with Marcos's Mom and Dad and bought her some lovely lillies and then I had to head back to Buenos Aires becaues I had another AIESEC meeting at 6PM. I did get there just about on time, but it made for a long weekend. Monday morning I went kayaking in El Tigre, a city about 40 minutes north of Buenos Aires whereas La Plata is about 45 minutes south of Buenos Aires. Then commenced my finals weel. Tuesday I had an oral final and Wednesday I had some work to turn in and then Thursday I was scheduled to have a final. It ended up getting cancelled due to a demonstration that was happening outside the school and it being a night class so the other Americans and I went to an American bar and met some crazy English people.

Friday was my friend Rachael's birthday (22, on the 22nd = her GOLDEN birthday) so we went out to lunch in the afternoon, headed to a salon where we paid for her to get her nails done, I got my hair cut, and Julie dyed her hair. We then went back to my apartment, cooked a delicious frozen pizza for dinner, and then started our night. The last picture I posted is from about 6AM when we left the club this morning and the sun had already risen and it was broad daylight.


I clearly started writing this and left it for two days before I decided to finish it, so I'll polish it off now that it's Monday and not Saturday anymore. Saturday was a day for relaxing and then I had a meeting at 8PM followed by a dinner at 10PM with everyone in AIESEC, the organization I joined. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met, and they come from all over the world. For example I have already been offered housing in Ecuador and Colombia when I go there, even though I probably won't need it in either place. Sunday I went to the rose garden where they have a least a hundred varieties of roses. It is amazing and I will put up an album of photos from all of this in a few days. Have a great day folks!

Córdoba = Oktoberfest

This past weekend I had another vacation within my year long vacation and let me tell you, it was GREAT. On Thursday night Julie and I hopped on a bus to Villa General Belgrano, a city in the province of Córdoba. The main attraction of the weekend was the conclusion of Oktoberfest 2010. The one in Argentina claims to be the second largest in the world, and there were definitely a lot of people there, but not an insanely large amount of people like I had expected. The bus ride was about 10 hours so we got in around 9AM on Friday morning and headed over to the campsite to meet up with Marcos, an Argentine friend. Marcos and Rachael, another girl from Madison, did a study abroad together in Germany during high school and he was the one who organized our whole trip and had the tent all set up for us when we arrived.

We spent Friday just hanging out on the beach, getting to know Marcos a little and meeting some of the really drunk guys who had been pregmaing for Oktoberfest all morning. It was a fun day and we ended up just hanging out with some new friends we made (a group of about 10 people from the province of Buenos Aires and California) rather than heading into town with a $12.50 (US dollars) taxi ride and attending the beer festival. They were all really cool and we all have plans to get together on Saturday night for an asado (basically a BBQ with freshly butchered meats) at Marcos's house in La Plata. It's exciting to have ARgentine friends!!! The only bad thing about Friday night was that it was REALLY QUITE COLD in the tent and Julie Marcos and I all didn't really sleep too much. I woke up every hour or two and all I could think of was how nice it was going to be once the sun came out during the day and I could lay out on the beach again and take a nap, but I survived, so no harm done.

Saturday morning we did some more exploring of the river, which was gorgeous. It looked like something out of a national park and it was littered with boulders and great for clambering around. We hung out with our friends again, had an asado that one of the boys prepared for lunch and then cleaned up and headed to the beer park. It was quite an experience and I will just say that I was really glad to have an Argentine man with me when the guys got a little aggressive. Everyone had to buy their own bier steins, which are just gigantic mugs for drinking beer and then go to a stand to buy tickets to fill up your mug with fancy beer. We got back to our campsite around 4:45AM so we missed the coldest hours of the night and we spent a few good hours before we went home hanging out with a random friend we met at Oktoberfest who had graduated from MADISON!!!!

Sunday was more of the same, hanging out at the river and then having a little campground fiesta with our new friends. They all grilled up hamburgers but Rachael, Julie and I went into town to explore and to go to a German restauraunt, THe city of Villa General Belgrano is known for being like a small German city so we thought we should give the cuisine a try. It was delicious and although the Argentines and Marcos went out dancing until 6:30AM we headed back to get a few hours of sleep in before we got up to take our bus back to the city. We had a ~12 hour bus ride back into the city because of the traffic of everyone getting back from the long weekend and last night I wrote a 5 page final paper for one of my literature classes so I only got 4 hours of sleep and am currently watching a movie for my afternoon class.

Two of my classes will be over with by next Thursday so I'm pretty excited about that, even if it means more work right meow. I need to make it through next THursday and it will be smooth sailing as my 3 remaining classes trail off. Two will end in the third week of November and the final class will end on December 1st. I am back in Buenos Aires for the week but a little busy, so I hope you enjoy my photos, which I put up on Facebook and are quite silly, and are all having a great time wherever you are in the world!

(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2063746&id=1280460131) the link to my photos.

Rosario

On Friday night I went to some German friends' apartment and we cooked an amazing dinner. They made homemade crepes which we stuffed like enchiladas with a homemade spinach and ricotta cheese stuffing and then we topped them off with a homemade redsauce and smothered everything in cheese and baked it in the oven. The German girls, Julia Nini and Mona cooked with me, Rachael and Julie, so there were a lot of 'Jules' around. We were joined by some German guy friends as well as some Argentine guy friends and we ended up going to a party hosted by some French girls, where there were even more international people, which was a really fun crowd to hang out with. I went home rather early, a little after 2:30 though, because I had to get up at 7 to pack to go on my trip to ROSARIO!!!! early Saturday morning.

I just got back from a vacation with my program, one of the two trips that we have already paid for with our program fees, and it was to Rosario, the second largest city in Argentina (~1 million in habitants). The city is a 4 hour bus ride outside of Buenos Aires in a neighboring province, so we met up around 8:30AM Saturday morning and headed out. Once we got there the weather was beautiful and we had a few hours of free time to walk around the city before we took a bus tour. We then had a little break before dinner so Julie, Rachael and I bought a bottle of wine and some strawberries, kiwis and pears and hung out in their room under the covers relaxing and watched Mama Mia on our flatscreen TV. It was pretty great but we did motivate ourselves to make it out to the dinner we got paid for by our program.

The appetizer was sweet bread (lymph nodes for those of you who do not know) which are a very delicious part of the cow. They were grilled to perfection and served on top of grilled tomatoes with a small salad and a delicious dressing. The second course/main dish was lomo, a really good cut of steak, to me it seems similar to a filet mignon. It was smothered in mushrooms and layed on top of a bed of cooked carrots and it was also amazing. Finally, to top it all off, we had a delicious lemon ice cream/custard/cake dessert. In fact, we ate so much that Rachael and I opted to do the 25 minute walk home rather than take a taxi, in order to work off at least a few of the calories and to let our food settle in before we went to bed. Our hotel rooms each had 2 double beds (one for each person) and were very luxurious, which was a nice change from the tiny little room I have in my host families apartment, and my tiny little twin bed. I, unlike the majority of the kids in my program, went to bed early and had a lovely nights sleep rather than heading out to the notorious Rosario nightlife.

Sunday was more of the same, exploring the city and then doing a boat tour until we headed back to Buenos Aires around 5:30PM.

Don't expect me to write for a while since I am currently swamped with school work. For next Tuesday I need to write a 5 page, 1.5 spaced final paper which I will have to orally defend the following week. I also have to study for the questions they will ask me about the entirety of my literature course during my oral defense of my paper. For next Tuesday I also need to read some Borges and watch a movie for a separate literature class at a different university. For next Wednesday I have to do 2 readings, go to the theatre to watch an assigned movie, and write a critique of a book. For next Thursday I have to make an outline of a final paper that is to be 10 pages long as well as prepare for a review for my history final the following week. Now, this would all be a normal academic week in Madison around midterms/finals time, but lets remember that I thought I was on vacation here. So I planned a trip, leaving tomorrow night after class, to Córdoba. Córdoba is a western province of Argentina, about 8 hours away from the city, and they host the second largest Oktoberfest in the world. I will be camping and attending a beer festival all weekend, not exactly conducive to hard core studying. I should be back in town Monday night around 7PM so hopefully I will have time between now and Thursday and between Monday evening and Tuesday morning to cram everything in.

Chau chau for now folks, Besos!! (kisses)

oh yeah, and here is the link to my new album of photos on facebook (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2062831&id=1280460131)

Responsibilities

I know, I know, I've been slacking on the blog keeping front. Last time I wrote on here was going on 3 weeks ago I think, so I'll just hit the highlights of what's been going on since I got back from Iguazú. I still have classes every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday although I'm almost done with two of them (my History class on Thursday nights and one of my Literature classes early Tuesday mornings end in October). I've stayed in the city since getting back from Iguazú and I have been having a jolly good time. This past week I began volunteering at a nursing home type place, but it's more of a shelter where adults 60+ can go from 8am-4pm to get free meals and be indoors as well as to have company and be treated as equals. A lot of the adults (they call them grandparents) who come in live on the street or live by themselves and are looking for companionship. All I did while I was there was meeteveryone and eat lunch with them, which was fun because one of the old guys has already startedteaching me slang.

As for filling out my light schedule, I'veadded a few more things. Volunteering will take up a few hours on Thursday mornings and soccer with my host sister and her friends will take up a few hours on Tuesday nights. In addition to both of those, I just joined a student/young adult organization called AIESEC. The whole point of the organization is to set motivated young people (like myself) up with international internships, the majority of which are paid. They can range from 6 weeks to 18 months and there are over 5,000 corporations world-wide that hold spots specifically for interns from AIESEC. My plan is to just be a member for now and help with the administrative side of things while I am here in Buenos Aires and then to stay a member when I return to Madison (Madison has a chapter) and do an internship after I graduate. Seems prettty ideal to me.

.

My friend Julie, my host mom Sara, yo, and my friend Rachael. Also the stuffed peppers.

My host nephew Salvador and his mom, my host sister Candelaria.

My host sister Florencia with her boyfriend Ale.

Hmm, lets jump to my host family. I don't know if I ever detailed before but I have three host sisters, Candelaria who has a son Salvador who is just about to turn 14, Florencia who has a daughter Catalina who is 16, and Soledad - the one I'm playing soccer with. I also have a host brother, Guillermo, the youngest of the 4 (he's 30) and he has not been home for a little over a month. He went on a 15 day vacation with his dad to Spain and decided to stay a little longer and go to England, since he had lived there for a year and a half a while ago. Worst possible situation, he got realllly sick with an intestinal bacteria and spent over a week in the hospital in England. He just got home this morning and he gave me a really cool sports watch that looks like a bracelet, but is just all around cool. Anyway, he seems to be pretty much all better, just a little skinnier.

Last Saturday, or maybe the Saturday before, about two weeks ago, I cooked dinner for me whole host family (minus Guillermo who was in the hospital in London). I made baked bell peppers stuffed with wild rice that I brought from MN, ground beef, cheese, tomatoes, onions, and they were delicious! I still have a few in the freezer that I can heat up if I ever get the urge for a stuffed pepper.

Sorry guys but I don't have the motivation to write any more at the moment, I didn't sleep too much last night!