Home, Sweet Texas.

I'm home now and it's ridiculously hot here. 108 degrees hot. So far I've had Mexican food, Chinese food, normal milk, real orange juice - with pulp, Ben and Jerry's, and root beer.  And there's still more to come.  I am going to be so fat so soon.

I've also begun job hunting.  It is such a long and tedious process, but hopefully it will pay off!

On another note, I got to spend 2 hours with Erin Stewart today on her BIRTHDAY! yay! What a great day already :)  mmmmm S Korea is so lucky.

...and I hope Dan Dekay is jealous.

The last few weeks

Sorry I haven’t updated in awhile, I’ve just been really busy since school’s been over. NOT.  I actually didn’t do anything really until Lauren got here.  Eat, sleep, walk to the store to buy more food, watch some Copa America, etc.  Going shopping with Paz and Romi was a good break from being a vegetable, and it was nice to hang out with them without having to worry about getting up for school the next day.  I also got to witness a FIRST EVER Starbucks tasting because Romi had never tried it before. BLASPHEMY!

The new artist in residence, Alice, got here on Friday so we showed her around a bit.  She went to capital with Facu and me that night to meet some people.  As we waited for the bus at the stop some rando came up to us and asked politely if we could “give him all of our belongings.”  And of course he said it in Spanish so Alice and I didn’t know that he was trying to mug us.  Especially since he couldn’t make eye contact with us, had a grocery bag in his hand, and couldn’t decide if he wanted to keep his gun out or not.  He kind of half heartedly touched Alice’s purse strap and she was so confused that she thought he was trying to tell her there was something on her back.  And when Facu saw the gun, he told him in Spanish “Ok, wait. We will give you what you want,” but the guy just turned around and walked away.  Slowly.  What a weirdo.  Piss poor effort on his part if I may say so.   We were so confused when the bus came that we just walked on like nothing had happened.  Welcome to Argentina Alice!

Lauren Lynn got here on Tuesday; so her, Alice, and I did all of the touristy stuff in Buenos Aires this week. Woo!  Wednesday was “friend day” here in Argentina which is kind of like mother’s day or father’s day, but for your friends.  Everyone gets together with their friends and has dinner.  Isn’t that cute? So naturally, since the 3 of us were on our own, we decided to buy some friendship bracelets and do friend things together and then meet up with the boys afterwards.  Our own little wolf pack.

We spent the rest of the time going out…way too much - and sight-seeing too I guess.  And then, as a last hurrah, we went to La Bomba del Tiempo on Monday night.  If only we had known Lauren’s flight on Tuesday would be cancelled.  I just can’t seem to get rid of her! Haha no just kidding I’m really glad she came.  I had so much fun this past week, it’s going to make it hard to leave on Thursday.  I guess we’ll both just have to continue the fun in Dallas.

I’ll put pictures up later.

Stateside on Friday. 

Food. Warning: it's a long one!

Sorry that it’s been so long since I’ve updated everyone on what’s going on in Argentina.  I wasn’t feeling well all last week so I wasn’t too keen on sharing the details.  But there’s nothing a long weekend at the beach can’t cure!  I went to Pinamar again because it was probably one of the last weekends it will be warm since fall is now here.  It’s a bit weird for me since it’s usually getting warmer this time of year in Texas.  It will be a bit of a shock when I leave winter here in July and head on back to good old 100 F Dallas. 

Anyway I realized I haven’t really shared much about the eating habits here which are quite different then the U.S.  First off, they don’t really eat breakfast like we do.  A cup of instant coffee and a banana or some bread is pretty much the extent of that.  While I don’t mind the coffee, I would kill for some scrambled eggs and bacon, but I guess I’ll manage.  Actually, it’s probably best since they eat more than 3 times a day here, I don’t want to surprise my parents with “a little extra Bridget” like I did when I came home from Spain.  Oops…

Here’s a typical eating schedule:

Breakfast 7:30AM: Coffee and a banana or yogurt.

Staff Break 10:25AM: Coffee or Mate and usually some alfajores or some sort of pastry.

Lunch 12:25PM: they’re pretty good about only letting the students have water here, unlike the US which feeds them milk and cokes.

La merienda (afternoon tea):  Either tea or mate and some banana milkshake!

Dinner 8:00PM: They eat much later here than we do in the states, and I think 8PM is even a bit early for them. 

So as you can see it’s really hard not to have gained 20 pounds at this point, and that’s even with me skipping the second staff break in the afternoon! I guess that’s why I go to spin class.  Well, sometimes ;)

Here's some traditional stuff:

Beef, or lomo, is very common here.  And they cook it quite different than in the U.S.  It’s also very common to have “un asado,” or barbeque here.  But you’ve got to pace yourself because they bring you all these delicious sausages (morcilla, etc.) and so of course, you put it on your plate and eat it, but then they bring you another round with pork and you want to try it, even though you’re getting pretty full.  And then they bring another round, yet again - Café de Brazil style - and it just doesn’t seem to end.

Some other popular things are Alfajores which are a type of cookie.  They’re like a dulce de leche sandwich with a chocolate coating on them.  Dulce de leche is also huge.  They put it on everything: bread, cookies, cake, bananas, ice cream, etc.  Tasty.

A traditional drink here is yerba mate, which is almost like a tea, but it’s more of an herb that everyone drinks.  I think it gets its name from the cup they drink it from which is called "a mate".  It has this straw that has a spoon shaped bottom.  They put in the yerba, add some hot water and pass it around.  Not the most sanitary thing, but it can’t be worse than communion at a Catholic mass. 

Looks a bit like you're drinking pot doesn't it?

Fernet is also very popular.  It’s an alcoholic drink similar to Jagermeister but not quite as gross because it doesn’t taste as much like black licorice (sick).  They usually mix it with coca cola to dilute it a bit.  It’s pretty good, you just have to be careful how much you drink though because Fernet used to be used as a cure for digestive problems.  My favorite drink here though, don’t laugh, is their Manzana flavored Gatorade.   The best.  It tastes like apple juice, but better.  I don’t know why the U.S. hasn’t caught on to this one because it is so much more refreshing than nasty G2 artic glacier freeze chill or something ridiculous like that. 

Oh, and kind of random, all the boarders eat frosted flakes here, but instead of putting milk in, they put vanilla yogurt in their bowls.  I mean, I guess that’s not too weird because we put granola in yogurt, I think it just throws me off because it’s not like they’re putting cereal in their yogurt, they’re putting yogurt in their cereal. Hmmm?

For the most part the food is good, I do miss a few things though, like a peanut butter.  And a proper hamburger!  If you order one here they give it to you one way, and one way only.  You can’t choose your temperature, cheese, topping, mayo/mustard, etc.; I miss the mushroom swiss burger (and you too Aaron Denney!).  Pizza is a bit of a disappointment as well.  Very different, don’t really know how to explain it.  But they do have empanadas which are delicious!  So good.  And I really miss some good old, fresh, whole milk.  It might just be me, but I’m a bit skeptical about drinking a glass of milk from a carton (or bag! (?)) that doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Dicey huh?

I think that’s it as far as food goes.  I haven’t made it to Mendoza yet for the wine, but I’ll let you know when I do because it’s supposed to be wonderful. 

Anyway, sorry this one was a bit boring, I just wanted to share a few of the differences I’ve noticed so far.  I like some of them, but it’s still so hard not to miss things like peanut butter and freshly brewed coffee.  But I guess that’s part of the fun of traveling! I'll update again in a few days with some more exciting pictures and stories from the beach.

Oh, and lastly, I want to give a big shout out to my friend JOE WELSCH! Hi.