Monday, June 14, 2010

I think the end is near.

So, yesterday I received an email from the oh-so-cryptic Ben, the step dad of all knowledge. It said "26 days" and other than sounding like a slightly shorter version of 28 days, I realized it's not that much time. I have a lot of papers and such left to write but that's not the most important thing. 3 weeks and counting.

Moving on, this past week was a bit hectic as I assume that all weeks in the future are going to be. I mean at least until I get home. I skipped my UBA class last monday because it was far away and I had a paper to write. Tuesday, I went to class but somehow in the course of my life became sick with what I will refer to as the plague. It was horrible, so Tuesday after class, I ended up laying in my bed and not moving, watching Dexter and thinking I was going to die. What made this worse is that I had already bought my plane ticket to go to Mendoza the next day, so I knew I had to rest. And I tried. It took me forever to go to sleep because I was having hot spells and cold chills and I had this nasty throbbing headache and I had a fever. It was really unpleasant. Then thank the lord, I finally slept. I woke up on Wednesday early than I desired to and watched Glee (which was a somewhat disappointing finale) and some more Dexter. At some point, I showered and dressed and we went to the airport and flew to Mendoza. And here we can move into the details of my trip.

We got to the hostel, it was really nice and cute and super safe. I went to bed almost immediately upon arrival and the others ate. I was asleep by 9:30. I woke up pretty early the next morning and checked my email and had breakfast and found out that we should already be leaving for our day at the wineries. We got the right bus to Mr. Hugo's and followed the map to our first vineyard, Trapiche. We took the tour, learned a lot about wine and realized how little any of us knows about wine. We did a tasting and Ami so genuinely commented that "it tastes like wine" when we were repeatedly asked what flavors we could taste in the wine? Leather, chocolate, tobacco, shoe, wool, sheep, dog, none of us knew what was going on. To add to this, I was still stuffy and when asked to smell wine, I couldn't really do anything more than suck snot. I was super classy. At this point, we were wine sipping without having eaten since breakfast and decided to go to one of the wineries to have lunch. It was the farthest away, the Familia di Tomasso and well, Ami bikes really slowly. Also, this calm country biking that you may have imagined is not exactly what we were experiencing. We were biking down the side of the main road that runs through wine country and there were buses and tractor-trailers and it was sometimes scary. At one point, when a tractor trailer full of wine bottles passed I realized what the most painful death ever would be. I used to think it would be slowly being eaten to death by a turtle, but I realize it may in fact be riding a bike on a road when a tractor trailer of wine bottles passes and the truck breaks somehow and all the wine bottles spill out, shattering on to you, cutting you all over while wine pours into your cuts. Doesn't that sound awful? Well, when the fourth or fifth truck like this passes by, less than two feet from you, you start imagining these types of scenes, like you were living in final destination or something.

Anyways, we had good lunch, more wine and then some more wine. We did some spontaneous yoga and somehow, our balance was off. Hmm. We eventually made it back to Mr. Hugo's to get our complimentary glass of wine. Well in Mr. Hugo's world, a complimentary glass is actually a complimentary unlimited amount of wine, where he continually fills glasses while smiling and speaking in Spanish to tourists, who mostly only speak English. It was great fun. At some point, we made it back to our hostel after Lindsay insisted on eating something from a place called Mr. Dog and I think the guy who works at our hostel thinks we're crazy. Although, he must not think we're too awful, we're facebook friends now, which is legit.

Friday morning, we woke up, slowly, all needing water. It was a very smart idea of ours to schedule our paragliding trip in the afternoon. We ate some breakfast and then avoided food, because apparently paragliding can cause nausea. This is true, in case you are wondering, I experienced it first combined with the nausea I got from the very bumpy, somewhat hazardous ride up the mountain. That would be the mountain that I then JUMPED OFF OF WHILE STRAPPED TO A PARACHUTE. OMG, it was so awesome. Adrenaline, Nausea, Cold, More Cold and then came the acrobatics. It was amazing, so amazing and I loved every second of it and I cannot properly describe to you what it is like to jump off a mountain, and I literally mean there are no words for the experience. I was speechless, but I got a baller picture of me in the air. It will be my new profile, don't fret.

So then, we returned and all showered because we were all disgusting, not from paragliding, from not showering for several days, because you don't have to when you live in a hostel. We went to the grocery store and bought groceries (only vegetables) to make ourselves dinner. Oh and we bought supplies or what supplies we could find in order to make chocolate chip cookies (because we were all missing them and thinking of home) and those supplies would come to delicious fruition the next day. We roasted butternut squash and batatas (which don't exist in English) and made some corn on the cob. Also, we made about ten times more food than we needed, but as I am most affectionately known as "the garbage disposal," it all worked out in the end.

For the rest of the weekend, we cooked more, we watched various movies and various games of the world cup. We baked, we became known as "the chefs" of the hostel and traded recipes with some new Irish friends. It was awesome and we essentially did nothing. We baked chocolate chip cookies which although very common in the US, are not so common worldwide and I had several people ask what we were making. We had enough to share with every single person in our hostel and everyone loved them, even though they judged our combination of milk and cookies and we judged their combination of beer and cookies. Also, in case you are ever in a country where brown sugar doesn't exist, for example, Argentina, then I have a solution for you. Instead of the usual present brown sugar, we substituted granulated sugar on a 1:1 basis and added about a tablespoon of honey based off an idea I got from googling. It worked perfectly, you couldn't even tell the difference. Also, they don't sell chocolate chips here in general, you can find them, but they're not everywhere, which astounds and confuses me.

Saturday night, we discovered a version of Spanish monopoly in the hostel. This was a win. We decided to play. It turns out that there is a reason I never play monopoly...I'm cursed. In a simple game of monopoly, I rolled 21 doubles. I went to jail 3 times because of rolling doubles 3 times in a row and I went to jail a total of 6 times (one of which I rolled doubles on the first try to get out). It was really creepy and we decided I was cursed because it is statistically disturbing to roll that many doubles. This led us to look up people who died on my birthday, because I am obviously the reincarnate (can you use that as a noun?) of some crazy evil dictator or algo así. Well, it turns out no one super scary died on my birthday, but the whole being born on Friday the 13th might have some weight in the issue. Also, while we were googling, I told Francisco (the night guy at our hostel) that I was cursed and he didn't believe me. So he pulls the game out of the cabinet and has me roll the die to prove I'm not cursed. Well, I rolled doubles, He still denies it and after we figure out no one awesome died on my birthday, he had me roll them again. I rolled doubles again. That's 23 times folks, be wary, you're my friends, you're next.

Sunday morning (awesome news show), we awake to finish packing and go to the airport pretty early. We make it back and attempt to do homework, not sure we ever did. This brings me to the next subject of my musings. I don't have all that much time left here. I have an epic amount of work to do, because the way school works here is no accountability for the majority of the semester and then a whole bunch of death at the end. So much fun. My goal is to be done by July 5th, so I at least have 5 days left in BA without a whole bunch of shitty work to do.

I've been thinking about it and I think there are actually some things I am going to miss about BA. It's started to grow on me a bit here at the end and I'm not nearly as unhappy as I was a month ago. I still hate my host family and I call them "las viejas" (which means old ladies) but she is now making me almost a separate meal ever night and this is helping. I still hate meat and can't wait to not eat it, but I've been able to avoid it fairly well in the confines of the city. The food is what has been causing me the most problem here, but soon I will have food I like. And once I stopped caring about my host family and what they think even slightly, life has been much better. I still can't wait to go home, but at least I know now that I can make it the last 25 days, which is now more like 24 and I will be fine.

All right, although I would like to keep writing, I have much work to do and really need to start doing that. Also, I should shower and wash my massively long hair at some point as it takes quite a long time now.

lots of love
lots of besos
kristin

p.s. i know that we are young and i know that you may love me, but i just can't be with you like this anymore, alejandro

^my new obsession, just accept it and watch the video, trust me, it's worth a watch and alejandro needs to beat bad romance as the most watched video of all time


p.p.s. i just put this into word to proof it because ami told me i was making mistakes and i really wish i could write papers this easily, it's 3 pages single spaced, damn

1 comment:

  1. I laughed multiple times out loud, you really are funny! Glad you have a found a "place" in BA and are no longer just surviving, but tolerating nicely. LOVE YOU MOST!

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