USA Estoy volviendo...

Before I left to study abroad my friends who studied abroad before would always tell me that my time abroad would go by so quick!!! I had six months of it, and although that’s a long time, my friends were all right. It went by quicker than I thought. Finals, World Cup, Friends, and Goodbyes!!!! That’s what my last month in Buenos Aires has consisted of.


Soooooooooooooo que mas…I leave Buenos Aires today. What can be said about that?! Lots!!! Depending on what perspective I use, my time away from home has been so many different things. Challenging, frustrating, amazing, beautiful, hurtful, eye opening, loving, life changing, and that’s only saying the least. To sum it all up differently my time abroad was one of the most difficult things I´ve ever had to do in my life and one of the most amazing things I´ve ever done. The bittersweet feeling of leaving Latin America and going back to the United States is one that I´ll never forget. This experience was worth every bit of pain and joy that I felt. Along the way I gained so much. I learned more than I thought I would have, gained more great friends, and changed the way I think about life.


Andrew I love you, no h…! Thanks for being a good friend to me always. You´ll always be one of my good friends. Thanks for eating all my vegetables that I hate, listening to my nose and all my problems, and brushing my teeth when I got lazy. Haha Mom Thanks for being a great mother to me even so far away. Heidi thanks for keeping my head on straight when I freaked out about things and for always being there for me! Jered and Justine, Thanks for making me feel like an older brother haha. Jesse thanks for checking up on me just to see whats up! All my American friends...Thanks for reminding me of home and listening in english when I needed to be a little bit of home! Walter, Guido and Claudio thanks for being my first and best Argentinean friends. Peace Out B.S.A.S

May and June!!!!!!!!

So with fifteen days left I find it hard to believe that time has gone by this quick. The other day I experienced the first time that I felt sad that I was leaving this place, Mi Querida Argentina. I asked myself, what I was going to miss and all of a sudden more things than I thought popped into my head. Experiences such as leaving your family, learning and living in another language, and facing the unfamiliar are just things that everyone should experience. I will be the first to let you know though that it is tough especially if you plan on going away for more than a couple months. I am one of those who experienced this and I have learned an incredible amount from these experiences, pero vale la pena.

Since the last time I blogged I have done a good amount of things. I went to an Argentina soccer game and watched the players whoop Canada In a match. It was crazy. I also went and celebrated the bicentennial here in Argentina. It was their 200^th year of being La Argentina. There was a huge festival/celebration which is really fun, crowded, and intense. Besides spending time with my friends, my favorite thing that I did last month was go to Iguazu Falls in Northeastern Argentina. It was the most incredible natural thing I have ever seen in my life. I´m not saying that I have seen a lot of other amazing natural sights in the world, but I´m pretty sure that Iguazu will be the most incredible one I will ever see. I went there with some of my friends and it was one of my favorite memories of being there. Also, while I was at Iguazu I went to this place called Las Tres Fronteras (the three borders) which is where you can be standing in Argentina and see Paraguay and Brazil over the river. It was an amazing sight as well. I hit up Chinatown here in Buenos Aires as well which was pretty cool, being that I have been to Chinatown in New York and Seattle. Also I went on a tour of the infamous Casa Rosada (Pink house) which is equivalent to the White House in the U.S. Above all, my favorite thing is to just hang out with my friends here in Argentina, and I´ve done a fair amount of that.

So having 10 more days of class left, and 15 until I return home I am going to study study study for my finals. I will also try hang out with my friends here as much as I can because I will probably never see most of them again. It´s a bittersweet feeling, one of the many that I´ve been able to experience along the way, but I think I´ve gotten used to handling it. Going places, meeting great people, and then picking up and leaving again really does suck, but at the same time the experience is worth the pain.

"The better part of one's life consists of his friendships."
- Abraham Lincoln,

Buenos Aires Part 2 Son!!!

Buenos Aires... May 12, 2010….. Wow has time flown by for me. Its only been over a month since I´ve last posted but it feels like forever ago. Anways so I´m just gonna say it. Buenos Aires has been rough this last month. I have learned a lot believe me, but the whole excitement of being here settled and home began to seem like heaven to me in my mind. I don´t know if it was more that I began to miss everything or if things here were just not going my way or what, but either way I struggled.

I was broke, eating canned tuna, and being accused of crimes haha. But on the positive side I have been learning so much and experiencing Argentinean culture (I´ll explain later, I just need to vent). I was hitting the gym regularly though which was good, until I began to see that I was losing weight which then I had to stop going to the gym because I did not have enough money to buy enough food for how much I needed to not lose anymore weight. Yea I go hard at the gym! So I stopped going to the gym and began to eat what little I had. My mom told me that my cell phone bill was really high because I had used my phone from the states down here. BIG MISTAKE!!! I turned it off though right after and I will pay you back mother! I promise. Also my family had birthdays that I missed. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUSTINE, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUSTIN, HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA. I also missed mothers day and my girlfriend and I´s 3 year anniversary. It´s been tough being away and missing days that would otherwise be spent with loved ones. It is okay though, it was just heavy on the mind.

Along with that here´s another story. So I´m sitting with my roommate at about 2 in the morning using the computer and all of a sudden we hear these huge thumps against the wall that were really loud. My window shatters on me!!! Somebody had thrown stuff at my window and broke it. We both ran out the room cuz we didn’t know what that had just happened. So we get the manager that is on duty and tell him what happened. So the next day I come home from school a little freaked out still, and the manage pulls me into his office and says, ¨Its your responsibility to fix it since you live in the room. Figure it out with your two other roommates.¨ I soon get pretty pissed because I can´t really explain it to him in Spanish since he really won´t let me talk. So he tried to tell me that I have until the following Monday to pay. I go up to my room and my roommates and I pretty much come to the same conclusion. We´re not paying. They even called my university and said if I don´t pay I´m out. I was pretty pissed and was feeling like bad luck wouldn´t leave me alone. So I guess rumor had it that this crazy guy across the street had been coming over complaining about the top floors here that have been being really rude to him. But I guess he came over with a knife threatening the residents. Anyways my roommate and I decide to walk over and talk with him about what had happened. Probably wasn´t the best idea at the time, but we were running out of solutions to our problems. He was very upset, and brought us to his building across the street and showed us whiere the top two floors yell at him and take pictures and are just rude to him. He then went on to talk about the loss of his son and his wife, and how that took away his purpose in life. He was very very upset and we assumed he threw whatever at our windows to shut the top floors up. My roommates and I live on the seventh floor of the residence and the eight and ninth floors were the ones that really bug him. We told him how our window broke and how we are just students and they want us to pay for what happened. He came up with the solution of him paying for it, so we don´t have to, but the people who annoy him have to go. So he writes down the names he knows and says in the morning he will bring the list to the managers. We were kind of skeptical of him and if he´d really do it, but as I was leaving for classes the next day I seen him. When I come back that day I felt better that at least the manages would now maybe think that it was our fault. I soon fall asleep and when I wake up there is a huge pounding on our door. There was about 20 residents at our door who were pretty angry. They assumed that we gave a list of people to the old guy to give to the managers Well the old guy already knew names just by listening to how loud the loud people are. So the residents at my door were mostly blaming my roommate for what really was their own faults, but it was whatever. It all ends up getting blown over, but the situation just sucked as a whole. I was just trying to figure out if I have to pay which would have been crap if I did. But the next day I asked the manager and he said nope. So I was free. Things began to look up for me.

Times were definitely harder this month, but with the support of my family, friends, and my lovely girlfriend they weren´t so bad. Thank you guys, I love you all very very much.

So as far as activities I´ve been hanging out with my roomies more and also doing more homework. I seen some Tango at the park. I see iron Man 2 here which was pretty cool. I figured out why so many Argentinens speak a lot of English, well I think. All the North American movies come out here and they stay in English, but just have Spanish subtitles going down at the bottom. I also went to the International Film Festival when it was here and seen a pretty sweet movie. I have also been to a few Parillas to eat some good meat which was great. I went to a BOCA game which is one of the biggest soccer teams here in Buenos Aires. It was crazay!!! We went there hoping we could just buy tickets, but didn´t go down so great. We almost gave up when we seen this huge group getting tickets from this guy. We gave him what I call the American pout and he sold us his last few tickets for 80 pesos son!!! That’s a pretty good price for just showing up, being American, and a BOCA game. We ended up sitting right below the fans to the other team which probably wasn´t the smartest idea, but it was really fun because of all the stuff they talked to each other. I learned lots of new vocabulary and it was just funny to watch, except the spit wads that we had to dodge. I can definitely see why soccer games in Buenos Aires turn violent.

So as far as homework… I have been getting the most in Spanish class, but its been minimal In my Liteature of Argentina class we have to write a 5 page paper that has to do with these books were reading which is pretty tough. In Folklore, I think, I have papers due soon, but the prof is just crazy and doesn´t like repeating herself, even to the International students. But we´ll see about that. Internet here in Argentina is the worst ever, huh Heidi? Haha yea but on the real, don´t come here expecting any good internet. I am grateful for the internet back home. Andrew´s dad just came to visit him and Buenos Aires and he took us out to eat and it was great. He even brought PEANUT Butter for Andrew which Andrew so generously gave me one. Like good internet, they don´t really have PB here in Buenos Aires either. It was the first time trying peanut butter for many of my friends and they seem to like it. Never as much as me though. Andrew and I have hung out a good deal and it seems his roommates and my roommates like each other a good amount. Andrew and I still kick it a good amount like going to book fairs, soccer matches, little get togethers, and so on. I like him, a lot!

So I have a month and a half ish to go and it´s flying by like crazy. This will definitely be the busier half homework wise, but I am not too worried because I know I will get it done when I have to. O got my first grade back on a paper the other weel and I got an 8. Which is equivalent to a B plus ish. Go mE!!! I would hang it on our fridge, but we don’t get one, or a microwave, or a kitchen. Yea sad day I know. Argentinean culture well, a little something is that they go out at 2 in the morning and come home at 7 to 10 in the morning. I´m glad I am not too fond of sunrises though. My roommates are something special also. They make me laugh so much which is good, but on the flip they also can push my buttons. We have definitely gotten a lot closer than we first were and that has come with fighting and making up. ButI wouldn´t have it any other way because I know they are good guys. One of them, Guido, is in love with Norah Jones and Alejandro Sanz while the other one loves classic rock and reggae ton. It seems like at first, my roommates were a little hostile towards me until I opened up to them about my life, and then they really opened up and we have gotten to be like a nice dysfunctional at times family. Point blank, I love them and they’re like brothers to me! It´s also getting chillier here, good thing I brought some sweats and warmer clothes. A lot of the international students are talking about getting stuff sent here or buying stuff. I´ve been traveling for months before this and I brought warm clothes, haha good luck to them though.

Alright well another week or so and I´ll be off to Iguazu Falls and I´m sure I´ll have another blog to post and then June will officially be here. I already bought my tickets for the falls and Im excited!!!!!!!! Tty all then. Good Luck and wish me luck with my stuff. Adios

Buenos Aires, Argentina

So here I am a month after getting into Buenos Aires. I feel like I´ve honeslty been here for about 4 or 5 months, but I think that’s just how you feel when you stay away for so long. This first month of being in Buenos Aires is definitely different than any of the other countries or cities I´ve n been to these last couple of months. I´m not gonna lie though, it feels so good just to be able to settle down finally and not have to travel because I was tired of packing and unpacking all the time. I appreciate being able to stay in one spot a lot more than I used to. SO Buenos Aires is huge!!! With 13 million ish people and a city with so much to do you can´t really get bored. I haven´t taken as many pictures here and I think it´s because I have a lot more time here in Buenos Aires left so I´m kind of being lazy. So I´ve started all of my classes and they are all pretty cool. Some are definitely more interesting than others, but I need these classes because they all count for my major which will help me graduate without problems. My schedule goes a little something like this.


Monday; Nada
Tuesday;(Spanish) Nivel Intermedio Alto
Wednesday; Economia Politca (Political Economy)
Thursday; Literatura Argentina (Argentina LIterature) and (Spanish) Nivel Intermedio Alto
Friday; Folklore Americano y Argentina, Historia del Arte HispanAmericano y Argentina
Weekends Saturday-Monday


So yea as you can see, my schedule is five classes long and full of lots of Spanish. I had a sixth class, but the professor spoke too fast and I couldn´t understand anything that he was saying so I just dropped the class. My classes here are worth 20 credits back home, but since the maximum amount of credits is 17 I will only be able to claim 17 of the 20 credits here. It kind of sucks, but at least I´m getting credit for both of my majors. Every single class counts as a Spanish class and a majority counts towards my Cross Cultural Studies Major!!! So as far as my social life here it´s pretty chill. I made some really cool American friends in my dorm and some really cool Argentinean friends and a lot of other International Students as well. The people in the picture are my friends that I pretty much hang out with every week like Sharice who is on the far right is from NY, Leigh Ann is from Texas, and Karla in the Middle is from the Seattle area just like Andrew and I.




I live with two Argentinean guys who are pretty cool (The two on the left of me). The one on the far left is Claudio and the one in between us is Guido. It was pretty rough at first, but after spending some time together I really got to like them both. We live in a student residence that´s super big. I live on the seventh floor and it gets pretty crazy on our floor. We are definitely the wildest and people come up just to see what we´re all doing up here. From our room we are directly across from other big buildings and homes. Whenever we have our music up there´s this little girl who walks out on her balcony and dances for us, it´s pretty amusing. Our residence has about 70 percent International Students and the other 30 percent are Argentinean students.



I really like the residence a lot. The residence is fun and pretty nice as well. Of course there´s things about the dorm that I don´t like, but it´s all good. The internet here is the worst I´ve ever used in my life!!! (One reason why I don´t blog all that much here). We can´t use the kitchen that is here which limits us from going out and buying food. So we get a meal plan here but it´s so we can´t use the kitchen which I guess is how they make money. So many people smoke in Buenos Aires too, it´s ridiculous. Even in my dorm sometimes my whole floor smells like smoke. Unfortunately I am allergic to smoke and my nose goes crazy, so it pretty much sucks for me. Also I feel like a majority of the students here are younger than me, which means they are always trying to go every night out and going out here means you don’t leave till the earliest 12 noon and don´t return before 5. Clubs stay open for days on the weekends so it really never stops. The food here is pretty decent as well. There isn´t as many options of food, but what there is to eat is pretty good at least. There´s lots of pasta, pizza, and steak places which is cool because I like all of it. But that´s a bulk of what there is to eat, so if you feel like eating different stuff you have to look a lot harder for it. Also, for entertainment there is lots of Tango, music, parks, museums, malls and lots more to experience. We took a boat ride the other day to go look at ex President Sarmiento´s old house which is in the hugest glass case I´ve ever seen. The cemetery we also went to which was really impressive. The cemetery is home to Eva Peron´s grave which is a pretty big deal here in Buenos Aires. Also I´ve gone to the Plaza de Mayo to watch the mothers walk in remembrance (to the left)of their lost ones during the 1976 Dirty War where thousands of people disappeared because of a corrupt government. The mom´s still walk every Thursday in front of the plaza 40 something year´s later. On March 25 we had the day off because of a national holiday. There were rallies in the Plaza de Mayo and many flags and representations of Che Gueverra, Tupac Amaru, and a few others that had been significant impacts in the past. The holiday celebrates a week long series of revolutionary events in 1810 when Argentina broke away from the Spanish and gained its independence. There were many political and social organizations that were rallying in remembrance of their revolution. It´s weird how time is going by so fast too. I remember when I planned all this and six months seemed like forever and now I only have 12 weeks left and then I´ll be back home. However many days it is I will try my best to enjoy them and learn as much as I possibly can. Okay well i´ll wait for another little until I feel like blogging. Adioso!

Wow. It´s been another long while. But its good that Im able to blog now because it says that I´m alive and I am well. Where do I begin? Well after five weeks in Honduras and a wonderful, but sad goodbye I have taken a bus to Tegucigalpa and flown out of there to Lima, Peru. It was an interesting time in Tegucigalpa, but then even more interesting in Peru. It was definitely a sad day to leave Honduras, but it was time to move on. Peace out fam! So I arrived in Lima on March 1^st and it was definitely a big big city. I seen houses and places for miles when I was landing and then we we hit up the beach and the main plaza that day I still couldn’t imagine where things started and where they ended. It was like a dream! We soon got confronted with strip club offers and drugs haha typical of looking like tourists. But honestly I came to Peru feeling like a tourist, and wanting to learn about a culture very very different from my own. So we explored the city, slept in the airport, and headed out for Cuzco the next day. Of course there was problems at the airport and they didn’t want to let me on the freakin airplane, but I used my best Spanish curse words to get my way, no not true, but they let me on eventually, two hours of standing at the check luggage place! We got to Cuzco and in my opinion, was more impressive than Lima, especially at first site. The city just looked more colonial, but it just had a more Incan feel if you will. So we headed to our hotel which was small, but cozy and really nice. I guess they just got good reviews in the new Lonely Planet books and we just got lucky somehow. The guy was Flemish (which means from Belgium), yea… I had no clue so I asked him. He spoke English and Spanish and was really helpful to us. Andrew got sick from the food the night before and so while he was recuperating in the bed during the day, I went out to explore the city. North Faces were unreasonably cheap and so yea I feel bad, but I got a couple haha and I also rented some hiking boots which would later save my walking career. I walked around and soon found out that llamas and Al-Paaca´s are the gold of the people here. Its crazy. And I also found out that there are three different types of lana, baby al-paaca, regular (Im guessing mid age) al-paaca, and then adult al-paaca. The baby al-paaca lanba is worth the most and the prices for anything made of it are at least a hundred dollars. I now find it weird that we have Al-Paaca´s in Spokane haha. I get back to the hotel after eating some good unknown meat and then feel sick after finding out what it was. Yea it was a blood sausage, but thank the Lord that I figured out after one bite that it wasn´t something I wanted to eat. The other meat was pretty good though. And I got it all for a prettier nifty price. I then returned back to the hotel and prepared my bags for a four day hike to the ancient Incan ruins of Choquequiroao and man oh man was it exciting!!! There was blood, sweat, tears, rock slides, bears, condors, pouring rain, fun, more sweat well you get the picture. Eother way Choquequirao was an amzing experience. We left the 3rd of March and returned the 7^th of March. I feel accomplished yes indeed, because we survived since Mama Pacha and Choquequirao is over 3,000 meters high!!! Yes it’s a beast. The hike was four days and I traveled with my bestest buddy Andrew Eller, two girls from Spain which was really cool that we had good company, our guide, and three helpers that carried our stuff, set up and put down our tents, and cooked us beautiful meals. It was all wonderful. Choquequirao can only be reached by walking which makes it harder to reach than its sister site of Machu Picchu. Our guide explained to us that when the Spanish came and conquered the Incans, they missed two great sites, Machu Picchu and Choquequirao! Why?... Pretty sure because those places are pretttttttty high. When we got back on the last day I was super tired, but felt like I was on top of the world!!!!!!!!!! I kinda was at one point haha but whatever. Back to Cuzco we later met up with our Spanish friends and I ate some Al-Paaca, some Trucha (trout) de La Plancha and even sang and danced a bit!!! Everything was good and we when went to pack up in the morning for our flight out of Cuzco or so we thought. So the morning comes and we leave to the airport and they of course can´t find my name on the list. But this time it was my fault because the flight back to Lima was the next day!!! I did feel crunchy at that very moment, but you know, things happen! So we decide to go get a day pass and see some more of Cuzco which i´m very glad happened. We checked out five main sites. The first was Tambomachay, then PukaPukara, then Saqsayhuaman, then Christo, and then Q´enqo. I liked all of them, but Saqsayhuaman (and yes it sounds like sexy woman) was definitely way cooler than the others, and the statue of Christ was very impressive as well. I would tell you what they all were for, but just ask me later and i´ll try my best to fill you in. We later went to this Center de Native Art to watch some dances and hear some songs from the region which was very interesting as well. Our day pass was good for a lot of stuff like museums, but the museums were closed… since it was a Sunday… just our luck! We then go back to the hotel after our free luggage store at another hotel. We asked a hotel to hole our luggage while we were out that day and we would then come back to get a room…but we just came back for our luggage muhaahahah. Yea but that plan kinda backfired a little when we got to the airport and it was closed!!! Yea we were just gonna sleep there and then wake up for our flight at 12 the next day, but we didn´t think about the fact that the Cuzco airport was smaller than your average. We then catch a super cheap hotel near the airport for 6 bucks for the both of us! Im talking discount ya dig! We then wake up after a good nights sleep and walk to the airport. Well I actually woke up with a sun burnt neck from walking around Cuzco the ngiht before. I didn´t even know either. I should´ve thought more about being closer or more directly under the sun haha but w/e. I´m currently sitting at the airport waiting to fly to Buenos Aires in the morning for the next four months of my life! I´m going to be studying at the Universidad del Salvador. I believe it has around 15,000 students and it is a Catholic institution. This time I´m going to be the International student! I get to experience more Spanish, more people, more culture, and just more everything which is just what I want. I´m super stoked to be in a new place and to experience more of life! Wish me luck. I love and miss all of you! Bye bye