el mejor dia de mi vida!!!

sooo i think yesterday was probably the best 24 hours of my life haha...starting with friday night.

this was during the day on friday...rue's mom had us over for cake and coffee! she's so cute


friday night, hannah, brett rue and i went to brett's house and had an asado with his family! who, by the way, are all HILARIOUS!! we got there at like 9 and just sat around and talked till the food was ready at about 11. his brother has a 2-month old baby who was the cutest little thing i have ever seen!! after dinner, brett's mom blared the music and started dancing haha and me and rue showed off all of our tango moves!

hanging out in the living room while Martin (Brett's sister's boyfriend) was barbecuing in the fire place..so cool





tango-ing!! haha




brett and rue dancing with brett's mom hahahaha she is so funny


sweet thing fell asleep


everytime some meat was ready, he would put it on this wooden platter and walk around the table and we would just pick off what we wanted...i have never eaten so much meat in my life!


brett and his mom having some bonding time...she was showing him family pictures


theeeeeen saturday, we took buses up to the mountains and went to this camp called 'el puesto'. it was the most beautiful place in the world!!!!! the mountains (not to sound cheesy) were actually breathtaking haha...when we first got there, we hung around the camp and talked and we went on a walk...the weather was perfect, too! we had so much fun walking around with Dr. Supplee who is my new favorite person!! haha she is actually in love with brett and rue...it's kind of sickening. hannah told me that she heard horses gave birth through their butt so i asked dr. supplee if it was true...aaaand she wont let me live it down haha. we had some really funny coversationsons yesterday with her! she also made fun of me because i believed brett's brother when he told me the blood sausage we ate was made with human blood.

our christmas card





roasting the goat!



i looked like the ultimate tourist haha




a puma that the pitbulls on their land killed!

after the walk, we went and sat at the tables and they served us SO MUCH FOOD. it was amazing....and these Argentine dancers came and danced for us, then we went horse back riding!!!! we rode all through the mountains which was beautiful! i think my horse was skitzofrenic...it would walk so slow like it was about to die and then when i would tap it with my foot to tell it to speed up and it would take off past the tour guide man haha. i seriously thought i was about to fall off cause i was bouncing so high...it was a BLAST



look how in love she is!


rylie dancing with the gaucho


the owner of the camp! sweetest man ever







on the bus ride home!


after the camp, we headed back to the city (about a 2 hour bus ride)...everyone took naps on the bus. then, annie, hannah, brett, rue, carlos (guy from hawaii) and i went to this little coffee shop and sat outside and drank some coffee to wake us up. then, we went and got burgers at the Irish Pub which i'm pretty sure were the exact same burgers my elementary school had....not good. but the fries were awesome. then, we ran into some people from michigan who are studying abroad in Chile and just came to Mendoza for the weekend. So, we went and sat outside this restaurant at some tables and hung out with them...it was SO FUN. at one point, hannah and i went to the bathroom and while she was on the toilet, i was messing with the bidet and trying to turn it on. it wouldnt work until all of of a sudden it EXPLODED!!! haha and by exploding i mean hitting every wall in the bathroom...and straight up to the ceiling hahahhaha...we couldnt breathe because we were laughing so hard and we couldnt turn it off for the longest time cause the handle was stuck so anyways, we went back to the table drenched in toilet water hahahaha

we stayed there for a really long time and hung out with the people from Michigan, and then we finally took a remese (taxi) home and hannah spent the night again!

dogs having sex....haha you're welcome


It seriously was the best day ever...very draining though, so it was nice to be able to sleep in today!

until next time...CHAU! (right, mom?)

mas? no, gracias. mas??? no, gracias. maaaaas????? no, gracias

sorry for not updating yesterday! didn't feel like it haha..still dont feel like it, but i'll do it for y'alls sake! the title of this blog is in honor of rue's dad haha. he is this italian type guy....he is soooo funny...very affectionate! everytime i see him he grabs my face and gives me a huge kiss on the cheek! but every time he tries to give rue more food, he asks 3 times everytime without fail...each time much louder and in your face hahahaha

hmmmm let's see...well yesterday we found out what classes we are in!! annie, rylie, brett rue, hannah y yo are all in the 2nd level!!!! we were all so happy that we were together...i was kinda freaking out that everyone was gonna be at level 3 and i would have to go back to level 1 and learn colors and months. they put the lists on the outside of the classrooms...it felt like we were looking to see if we had made the cheerleading squad!

sooo then we had 4 full hours of non-stop spanish. i'm pretty sure our teacher doesn't know any english haha. we have a different teacher everyday which should keep things exciting...and monday and wednesday we have one teacher from 9-11 and another teacher from 11-1 so hopefully that will make it go by faster. it's sooo nice having a routine down now because we get to see all of our friends at school! the first couple days we were all definitely out of our comfort zone trying to get used to everything. friday is by far the best day though cause we go to school from 10-11 and then straight to tangooo!!!! (that's what some of us are taking to get credit for an hp) even though we didnt have to be there till 10, we still left with rue's dad at 8 cause taking the bus takes an hour anyways! so we got there around 8:30 and just sprawled out across the chairs and took a solid one hour nap...well rue and i did. i think brett just played poker on his phone. except we got woken up at one point cause the janitor came in and sprayed swine flu disinfectant everywhere (the room with all the americans) hahahha it was suffocating how strong it was....we had to stick our heads in our shirts cause we could barely breathe. i think they were trying to kill us.


tango lessons were a blast!!!! this sexy argentine man (sorry blake haha) teaches the class...all of the girls jaws were hitting the floor haha...but we learnt a couple 8 counts today!! i'll try and put up a video of us doing it...it's SO FUN! the teacher kept getting on to rue because he was trying to sway his hips too much hahahaha so funny....he kept telling us to be passionate and sensual hahahahha it's gonna be a fun 5 weeks in there. we have to bring a handkerchief next time...i guess as a prop?

our bus on the way to tango lessons!



rue tango-ing!! haha



last night was a blast...we went into the city to meet annie, rylie and sharay (this girl from Holland) to eat dinner! we went to this restaurant called Giovani's and all got pizza (mainly because it was the only word we recognized on the menu) and rue got ravioli. all of the walls were covered in hundreds of wine bottles- almost every restaurant is like that. we went to dinner at like 8 so we were the only people in the restaurant because people dont go to dinner here until 10:30 or 11 buuuut we kinda wanted to get to bed early. after dinner, we just walked around downtown and stopped inside this place called the Irish Pub which was really cool...it was so funny because they were playing all American music and they definitely showed the "I'm on a boat" video hahaha i got a picture for you, anna! After dinner, I called my mom and she called a remese (a taxi) for rue, brett and i because she didnt want us riding the bus home at night. It was hilarious trying to tell the taxi driver how to get to our house...we could barely say it in english...buuuut, yet again, somehow we made it!

i'm the only one that has a cell phone right now...but we feel like little kids because rue and brett carry around wadded up pieces of papers in their pockets that have their mom and dad's numbers on them to call and check in when we aren't at home!

walking around the city...and annie navigating!


at dinner!


the girls in front of la plaza de independencia!
from left to right: sharay (girl from holland), rylie, me and annie


en la ciudad!



at dinner, after a glass of wine, rylie wanted to prove to us that she could fit her whole mouth over the glass: hahahahhaha




annie and rylie are at the mall right now and we wanna go meet them buuuuut arent sure what rue's doing...i think his whole house is asleep cause they wont answer the door and we dont really wanna go without him so we're checking our emails, facebooking and skyping till rue wakes up! oh and brett is having a tea party at my house right now haha...here's proof:







tonight, brett's sister and her husband are having an asado (argentine barbecue) at their house and invited rue and i -and hopefully hannah will come too! so we're doing that and then early tomorrow we are all going horseback riding in the mountains for the day!!!! i'll have pictures of all of the above as soon as i get a chance!

till then...CIAO!



this one's for you, dad!

juuuliannita (mi papa's nuevo apodo para mi)

esto es corto porque soy muuuuuuuuy cansado

in a nut shell...we went on a tour of the city. so basically, three hours of wandering around the city staring at monuments and an argentine lady...and not understanding a word that she says. they separated us into 4 different groups that we toured around with, which i think are going to be our classes. no one else in my group understood what she was saying, sooooo great news for the next 5 weeks! i dont think i grasped the second semester spanish well enough to move on so i'm praying that thats what i'll be in. you still get credit for the baylor classes that you came to get credit for, you just get to learn at your own level....but i dont think you can still get an A. which, lets be honest, i wasnt going to anyways so its win-win for me!

we stopped by a bank on the tour so that we could exchange our dollars into pesos...so i have enough now that should last me for quite a while. i am my father's child and have managed to only spend 5 pesos in the 4 days that i have been here! you're welcome, dad.
i definitely haven't been starving myself though...my mom just cooks amazing meals...i'm gonna come back 100 lbs heavier....sorry blake. especially if i keep taking siestas instead of going running with the boys like today. and its fun to eat at home cause its about a 2 hour process. we always have hot tea after (i'm getting a little addicted to green tea) and sit around and talk. that may not be fun after sunday though, the day that my family says we are only talking in spanish from then on. blaaaaaahhhh...thats gonna be the worst day of my life.

i only took one picture today, so here it is....its hannah, carlos y yo...they were part of my tour group. this is on top of "cerro de la gloria" (a famous monument on a hill). in case you care, in the bottom left corner of the picture where those houses are used to be the slums of Argentina...they just built those houses within the past 5 years.
-carlos is from hawaii (theres about 15 people in our classes that are from university of hawaii) and hes hilarious...too many funny stories to tell about him




i started blogging after dinner and felt bad for not taking more pictures haha soooo this is rue walking into my house tonight. i figured its better than nothing. it kinda shows you the feel of my house...thats the "greek look" that i see outside my shower.
and thats our dog Otto who is a beast of a german shepherd...i call him Oso cause he looks like a huge bear. This picture doesnt do him much justice. He's a great guard dog though cause when strangers come up to the gate, he goes crazy and jumps up (almost over the gate...which is just a little white picket fence)...you literally think that you are about to die. Brett and Rue used to hide a stick by my house so they could ring the doorbell with it haha...but now Otto knows them so he's sweet when they come up to the fence.


well, so much for being short haha...lo siento

bed time. CIAO

CLASS BOOOOOO....AUTOBUSES YEAAAAA!!!!

so i have a little bit before we eat lunch so thought i would write a quick something! today we had our placement test, which is the test that shows how much spanish we know and so what class we are going to go to. this included a written exam and an oral exam (SHOOT ME IN THE FACE.) dont get me wrong, i looove the language of spanish in trying to converse with families but sitting down and taking a written grammer exam can kiss my butt. i forgot how much i hate spanish tests. and by hate i mean HATE. but at least they look pretty at the end...all of the numbers are decorated and i leave pretty drawings for my teacher. it took me back to spanish 2 oral exams when i failed... (i'm really making myself sound smart here haha) when the 2 words i knew best were 'no se' or 'no comprendo'. and the days when instead of writing an essay in spanish i would write a long letter to my teacher in english about how i still dont understand any of it. one time the girl next to me looked at me and said 'are we supposed to write that much on the essay??' i told her yes because it made me feel smart for about 10 minutes. i hated that teacher. i saw her across campus a few months ago and wanted to bodyslam her.

aaaanyways, after class i got a medialuna!!!!! which made everything better! and then brue (thats gonna be rue and brett's new name cause i dont feel like typing both of them) and i took the bus home. our house is about 20 minutes away from the school in a car, but it takes about an hour to ride the bus home because of stops and waiting on buses...so we have some pretty interesting conversations haha it was the first time that we've done it by ourselves so it was pretty entertaining. we have to take one bus (3-33) and then we get off after the coke factory and cemetery and then wait for the next bus (1-19) and get off at the 2nd stoplight after the brewery on your right and church on your left. haha somehow we made it, and then we walked home from the bus stop to our house. on the walk we saw a man holding his pantless daughter over a hole in the ground and she was peeing in it. the hole in the ground is actually this river thing that is in between the street and sidewalk...it gives water to the trees and plants somehow. i cant remember what it's called...but you get the picture. it was so funny/disgusting.

well thats all for now. i'm gonna take a short siesta, eat lunch then rue's mom is taking us back to the city. we have a city tour with everyone at 4:30...i'll write later tonight! hopefully with pictures

CIAO

MEDIALUNES mmmmmmm

Mi Casa!!!
Weeeeelll this morning started early at 6:30. I set my alarm at the loudest it could possibly be set to make sure that I woke up. Usually, no matter how loud an alarm is, it NEVER wakes me up…because I start to dream about whatever Kidd Kraddick is talking about or I dream about the song playing. But since it was all in Spanish, I think I got confused and didn’t know what to dream about aaaand woke up right away. There is a window at the end of the shower that opens up to patio where they hang their clothes to dry, so I felt like I was showering in Greece haha cause there were vines everywhere and stone walls with clothes and sheets pinned up. So, I sang some opera in the shower to fit the mood.

My family had already all left for work when I came into the kitchen to make breakfast. There must be some special touch to turn on the gas stove because apparently straight gas doesn’t toast bread. I spent too much time trying to figure it out and was running late, so I decided to just grab some cereal. Well, apparently they don’t have Ziploc bags in argentina, so I just put the cereal into a bowl, put a banana in the side pocket of my backpack (which I forgot about and found smooshed later at school…..woof) and started walking to Rue’s house. Or I guess I should say speed walked/jog-walked while looking behind me the whole time for rapists. Even though it’s just around the block (about 30 seconds walking), it’s still really dark…I think a stray dog put a curse on me, I growled at it a little so it knew I could take it.

Rue's dad (the most affectionate man i have ever met) drove us to school. The whole way we were trying to decode his sentences...with a group effort, we understood most of what he was saying. Then, he walked us to our class haha...we felt like little kindergarteners on our first day of school with our daddy. It was so funny...everyone was staring at the stupid Americans. i wish i had gotten a picture, but i'll take one tomorrow!

SO SO SO good to see all the girls!! We had a break in the middle of school and they fed us pastries including medialunes (croissants w/ honey on them....heaven in my mouth. i had 5 of them. whoops) and coke. We all had lunch at the school which included appetizer, entree and dessert which was about 2 and a half hours but incredible food. I forgot to take pictures at lunch. Then, Brett's mom met us at school so she could show us how to use the buses to get home. so the 4 of us walked to the bus station. She literally knows no english, so we were flipping through brett's english-spanish dictionary pretty rapidly the whole time haha

Then we walked home from the bus station which is a BEAUTIFUL walk...I almost got ran over by a car, but Brett's mom pulled me out of the street yelling 'DANGER!' (her only english word hahahahhahahahah). Then came home for about 45 minutes and caught up on some emails and was just about to take a siesta when brett and rue ring the doorbell wanting to go to the open mall. So, Marcos drove us there. We walked around for a longtime then sat down at a coffee shop for a while and hung out. so so fun...we've kind of become our own little family haha



We stopped at this little "Italian Starbucks" as Marcos called it and had some coffee, gelato aaaaand I had another medialuna. (they are incredible!!!!!!!) We went up to the counter and were going to start to order, but Marcos said that you are supposed to sit down and they come to you. Then, Rue was going to order a glass of wine but Marcos said that everyone would laugh at him (apparently you dont order wine at coffee shops?) haha so it was good we had Marcos there to teach us how to not be stupid tourists. We sat there for a long time and talked...sooo fun


walking around! it's soo beautiful


Roberto y yo! Everytime Rue introduces himself to an Argentine they say RUUUUEEE?! haha sooooo now he is Roberto.



Brett and his mama! This is when we were waiting for the bus to come pick us up from school haha. casey, this woman is the argentine version of your mom


It's 8:30 now, so dinner is in about 2 hours haha (they eat dinner at 10:30 or 11) and then hopefully BED!!!! Tomorrow is our placement exam so i'm gonna try and study some spanish tonight. Till tomorrow....CIAO!

no se? no comprende? no hable espanol?

today was my first full day in mendoza!! may 25th is a national holiday so there is no school and everyone stays at home and celebrates with their families! somehow all of the pictures on this blog got mixed up...the first thing we did today is at the bottom and the last thing is at the top haha....dont worry, ill get the hang of this blog thing sooner or later! so go down to the bottom and work your way up!
We came home around 9 and Rue, Brett and Gonzalo (Rue's 13 yr old brother) came over to my house and we hung out for a while. Gonzalo doesn't know very much English....him and Marcos (my brother) had fun making fun of our spanish haha
attempting to read a german book to him haha neither of us really knew what we were doing...so we just pointed to things and said the words in spanish -like colors and animals haha i think we read this book a total of 6 times. everytime we were done he would jump around and yell "otra vez!! otra vez!!"SO CUTE
after the barbecue we had siesta (best part of the day!!) then went over to my mom's brothers house and i became instant best friends with Juany- the 2 year old. probably because we know about the same amount of spanish haha...but he is CRAAZZZZYY! he is obsessed with the movie cars (rayo mcqueen haha) and madagascar. he watches one of them everyday, so when we were leaving they were turning on madagascar for him. his mom is german and so he is learning german, spanish and english all at the same time. he is so precious...i am already obsessed with him!
setting the table
all different kinds of meat (AMAAAAAZING), toasted bread and melted cheese!
We then decided to go home and have a barbecue which was one of the best meals that i have had in a loooong time!This is my brother Marcos grilling outside. The way they barbecue takes about 2 hours for the meat to cook, so we just sat outside and talked which was alot of fun. I am ETREMELY fortunate that my family speaks english...but they said its only for the first week. so starting sunday, we are only speaking spanish. so looks like i wont be talking much for 5 weeks!
mi hermano y yo!
After breakfast, we went up to a hill in the city called 'cerro de la gloria'.
this is a picture of my family and I in front of the famous monument. after looking around for a while, we got back in the car and drove around the city and by our school and they pointed out to me all the different things I will be doing. this is a picture of me with my family!


We all slept in today till about 11 then ate breakfast which included toast (looooots of bread all the time), cereal and freshly squeezed orange juice which was AMAZING! they used 2 oranges, a grapefruit and some water. best juice i have ever tasted and it is completely natural! this is my room in the house!