Friday, June 22, 2007

I woke up about 6am and it was storming… how wonderful! I love sleeping through storms! I went back to sleep to the sound of rain and thunder, a delightful combination! I got up about 9 and got ready and had breakfast (two media lunas, tostadas with dulce de leche, two cups of hot chocolate, and grapes). I worked on my computer for a while and read. I got my stuff ready to go and packed some lunch and left at noon to go to school. I got there a few minutes early and made plans with Will to go to Uruguay. I feel bad because Tammy is coming tomorrow and I won’t even get to see her tomorrow, but if I stay here, I won’t get to see her much and I will have to spend the day alone (again). I asked some people about Uruguay who had been there before. Will and Rachel wanted to get an ice cream cake to share before Rachel leaves tomorrow, so we made plans to meet at 6pm in front of the university. Our profesora was 15 minutes late. We were all anxious, yet nervous, to get the results of our exams. She passed them back to us one at a time and I was the last person to receive mine. I was pleased to see that I got a 9 (out of 10) on my final and a 9 for my final grade, as well. I was worried that I might not pass and I actually did very well! Eugenia wanted people from our class to sing in Spanish today, but no one really wanted to. Some people sang songs that they knew, but almost everyone in our class was exhausted and suffering from a hangover from the night’s activities. Most of them had been out until 4 or 5 in the morning! We sat there for about 30 minutes and passed back our exams. We weren’t really doing anything. Eugenia said we were done and she went upstairs to leave the exams. She was going to go out for mate with the majority of our class. Will and I had already planned to go to the Casa Rosada for a tour at 3, so we went ahead and left the class. Will and “Jennifer” (as my “new” ID card says) got online and checked out prices and schedules for the buquebus (ferry) that will take us to Uruguay. We went downstairs and took pictures with Eugenia before heading out. We took the subte to the Plaza de Mayo and walked to the Casa Rosada. However, when we talked with the guard, he said that the tours have been suspended for the next month. I am not sure if he said why. We didn’t know what to do since we had been in that part of the city the day before. We decided to walk down by the docks. This part of the city reminded me of Hong Kong (only not as nice) because there were skyscrapers right on the water’s edge. It made me want to take a ride on the Star Ferry. The girls from AU leave for Hong Kong in just a few days! I am so jealous! :) Anyway, we decided to walk to the ecological reserve which is supposed to be really cool. We had trouble finding the entrance, but we did eventually. It was a really weird place because there was a huge “field” of wild plants and lots of birds which felt like you were out in nature, but right behind this area, there were skyscrapers. We walked on a dirt path that went around this gigantic field. We walked about two miles around it. It was super muddy! At times, I had so much mud on my shoes that I could barely lift my feet! We left the park and went to search for the office to buy tickets for the buquebus tomorrow. We had one failed attempt when we tried to enter the navy area (I think) by the dock, but a man told us (in very broken English), “Orange building… over the water.” I know he was just trying to be helpful, but is our Spanish really that bad? He didn’t even know the word for bridge! We kept walking and found the brick building and after asking in the wrong place, we found the right place to go. We had originally planned to take the “rápido” buquebus that only takes one hour, but we found a better deal offered in the window of the travel agency. The fast buquebus costs about $54 US and takes 50 minutes to get to Uruguay, so it costs about $27 US an hour. However, with the deal we found, we get to ride in the buquebus for only $4.50 an hour! I do have to mention, though, that we will get to ride the slow buquebus for 3 hours each way. Our tickets cost $28 US. We decided that it was worth it to save the money and take the longer ferry because we have heard that, although Colonia, Uruguay is a cool city, there is not a ton to do there. We will have almost six hours to explore and we think that should be sufficient. After making our plans, we had to go and purchase the tickets at another counter. We finally got finished and realized that it was almost 5:30 and we were really far away from everything. I tried to call Rachel, but realized that I didn’t have her number! Oh, no! We were going to be very late. We walked as fast as we could through a really shady part of town and made it to the Retiro station. For some reason, Will wanted to take the train instead of the subte, so we did, but we had to wait for about 10 minutes before the train left and then it deposited us kind of far from Cabildo. It was about 6:20 at this time and we were supposed to meet Rachel at 6:00! I felt really bad, but there was nothing we could do. We power-walked to the ice cream place, hoping she might have gone there when we did not show up to the university on time, but neither of us could remember where this particular ice cream place was! We were searching frantically up and down the streets where we thought it might be and we eventually found it (about 6:45), but Rachel was not there. I felt terrible that we had missed her! Will decided to get some ice cream anyway, but (write this down in the record books!) I didn’t have any because I knew I would eat dinner as soon as I got home. We sat down while Will ate his ice cream and made plans for tomorrow about how we are getting to the buquebus and when we are meeting. We decided to meet at 6:15am and try to take a bus (we have no idea how many buses will be out on a Saturday morning so early) to the buquebus. We have to be to the buquebus place at 8am and we don’t want to be late. Hopefully, everything will work out with us getting there! We walked back to Cabildo and then went our separate ways. I stopped at the grocery store and bought more bread and then went home. Fani greeted me and I told her about my day and then she got supper ready while I put some things away and started repairing a tiny hole in my (my mom’s) bag. (Don’t worry, it’s not a big hole, just a stitch in time!) I ate dinner which consisted of soup, cucumbers and shredded carrots, green vegetable ravioli with cheese inside in a weird meat sauce, and chocolate mousse. I told Fani not to get up in the morning to feed me breakfast because it is so early. I assured her that I was capable of getting my own breakfast. She got my hot chocolate ready for me and it is waiting in the microwave for me now (how tasty!). Fani did the dishes and I waited for her to finish so I could take my shower and have “warm” water. My shower was cold, as usual, but toward the end, I did have a blissful fifteen seconds of warmth! I am going to take a long, hot shower when I get home and I am going to enjoy it without goosebumps and shivering! I started getting my things around for tomorrow and Fani went to bed. I wrote this blog entry and now I am going to finish up my packing for tomorrow (which more than packing is really unpacking because I need to remove a lot of junk from my bag). I am going to wake up at 5:30 tomorrow! Hopefully, we will have a fun, safe trip to Uruguay and Sunday I will get to see Tammy! Hurray!