UPDATE!

ok well it has been like a week since i have updated my blog, for a few reasons. the main reason is that not much has happened. this week was mid terms so i had a test everyday except friday and i have one monday. i think i did ok on all but 2. one i did really bad on, that one was in geography. the other one that i dont think i did to well on was conversation. but that one was better than geography. but the other ones i think i did pretty well on. i went to rosario again last weekend. didnt really do much except some shopping and tour a few more places. but it was fun and good. i got a few good ideas for presents for people. so be prepared i might get you something. i came to the realization a few days ago that in less than 2 months i will be somewhere in Argentina (probably) getting ready for Christmas! im really excited. i cant wait to see what my spanish is going to be in 2 more months. it feels like now that my spanish is still horrible (which it is) but i look back on where i was before i got here and i am SO much better than i was before. i have gotten more people to tell me to make more videos so i will try to do that tomorrow. im going to Salta tomorrow with some people so i will be gone all saturday afternoon. we go to Buenos Aires in about 3 weeks. im really looking forward to that, i cant wait to go. my plans for Christmas are still up in the air but i have been invited to go to several different parts of Argentina with several different groups of people, the problem is, i am only one person and i cant go everywhere at once which really sucks. ohhh man lets see, anything else new......dont think so. i joined band. im not sure if i said that or not. im also in the ACA choir that is going well. we have our first performace i think the end of next month. there are some really good singers in there. im super glad to be sitting next to Jon, he actually knows what hes doing. today was one of the hottest days we have had. i dont know how hot it was but it was way too hot to do much of anything but sit in Griddos (the ice cream shop) and eat ice cream and enjoy the air conditioning. well thats about it. they turned the power off and my battery is going to die soon. i will talk to you all later. love ya all


Lars

Santa Fe...

Ohhh man what a trip we had. this is probably going to be one of the longest posts ever, so much happened in just two days. ok so to start at the beginning. i got up at 5:30 in the morning so we could all catch the 6:20 bus out of here (UAP). we take about an hour bus ride to Parana and get another bus from Parana to Santa Fe, about a 40 minuet ride from Parana. when we get to Santa Fe the fun starts. as some of you know Argentina is a primarily Catholic country, which means that everyone goes to church on sunday. and since everyone is at chuch on sunday, no stores are open. so at this point we get into Santa Fe at about 8:30 and not having eaten anything before we left the school, we (we being Erich, Samantha, Nolan, and myself) go out in search of food to eat, but we thought that it would probably be better to try to find a place to stay the night. fortunatly most everything that you will want to do in Santa Fe is in a central location so all the hotels and places to eat are all in like a 6 block radius. after the 3rd place we went to to look for a place to stay the night told us that they didnt have room it hit us, it was going to be hard to find a place to stay because the next day (monday) was Columbus Day, and here they celebrate it big time, but we kept looking at hotels for a place to stay (we couldnt really find any hostels which really sucked). as out list keeps getting smaller and smaller of hotels we have checked, one of the hotels tells us that check out is at 10 and that maybe after then we might be able to find a place to stay. well this makes us feel a little bit better so we decided to get some food. as we start walking around, it becomes very obvious that food is going to be hard to find. after walking around for probably a little over an hour, we found a sports bar like place to sit down and get some food. now by this time my voice is gone. in the moring when i woke up it had started to go, but by now its gone. so trying to talk, espically in spanish, was very difficult and sitting in the sports bar for 3 and a half hours or 4 hours (because we had nothing else to do) and talking didnt help. after we have a good meal we go back out on the hunt for a hotel. this time we got lucky and was able to get the only two open rooms at a hotel, and we ended up taking them. after we get settled into our rooms, we hung out at the hotel till about 4 when some musems and other buildings opend up (we had to wait till ciesta got over for the few buildings that were open to.....well open). we made our way down to this really nice plaza called 25 de mayo plaza. it was really nice and had some really cool old Spanish missionary churchs and some old government buildings. while walking around plaza we decided to go and look in some of the buildings and see what they looked like inside. the first building we went into, i dont even know what it was, had a guard right at the door who stopped us and asked us what we were up to and all the normal stuff someone would ask you. 45 minuets later he is still talking to us. Erich, who is Argentinian and speaks spanish had a hard time keeping up with this guy. he talked about everything under the sun, from giving us a Bible study, to talking about how most Americans dont know much about Argentina to just about his life story.....it was crazy. i was lost almost the entire time. i really had no idea what the guy was talking about, Erich had a hard time keeping up. he just kept talking and talking and talking, it felt like i was there for hours. when we finally got out of there (he left only because his shift was done) we went to a really cool looking spanish missionary church. i love going into old churchs like that and seeing everything inside, it was super beautiful. by now its was about 7 or 730 and we needed to find some place to eat. so we walked down to this restuaunt that we went to before (and they were closed) only this time it was open, sort of. it was open but it was a grill place and they had just got the coals for the grill going and they needed to get the rest of teh coals going and everything cooked and that we needed to return at 8:30. so to kill some time, Nolan went to an art museum and Sam, Erich and I went to a pastry place that was incredible! there was so much chocolate and cake and it all looked so good. so of course i had to buy some. i walked out of there with some of the best little chocolates of my life. this place would put See's out of business. by the time we walked to the pastry place (called Las Delicious for a reason) and got back to the grill place it was just about 830, so we sat down and ordered our food. the deal that we got gave us a little bit of every part of the cow (and an amazing piece of chicken). we had ribs, chicken, something else, and the 'best' part of the meal. now when i mean 'best' i mean the part of the meal where we were glad we didnt throw up. Erich has in app on his phone that is a spanish to english translator and when he looked up the english word for this thing all it said was sauceage. so im thinking ohhh cool beef sauceage!!! i dont think i have ever been more wrong in my entire life. only after i had taken a bite and some how managed to swallow it. only after Sam did the samething, and only after Erich and Nolan tried it, did we get the intellegence to ask the waitress what it was. while she was telling Erich, i could tell by the horrific look on his face that i probably didnt want to know what it was that i just ate. but i soon found out. ok before i tell you what it was i will describe it to you. it was black, about 4 inches long maybe 5 and the inside looked like it had small pieces of stuff in it, like a stuffing of some kind. the thing that we ate was........i dont remember the spanish name.......was cow intestine filled with random parts of the cow (we have no idea what parts of the cow) cooked with cow blood. ok i will wait for you to get back from throwing up.................. ya pretty gross. i almost threw up, and then again when the other guys were trying it. so now i know not to eat that, whatever 'that' was. i was glad to have some sweets left over from before to eat. we got up and left and went back to the hotel to hang out and chill. monday morning, was pretty chill. the hotel had a breakfast so that was nice, saved us some money on food. and we walked around and did some window shopping went back to the same plaza as before, walked around and sat at a nice cafe and drank coffee. i had whats called a submarine, which is amazing! after that we went to the bus terminal and cought a bus to Parana, ate some food and came home. so as you can tell we had a very eventfull weekend and a great time, eating food that we didnt want to, seeing beautiful sights and having an overall wonderful time. i hope that everyone at home at other parts of the world are having an amazing time! love ya all

lars

Orange Juice & Kisses

well again not much has been going on here, just school and homework. but im sure you are all interested in the title of this blog. usually here at UAP they have a good selection of drinks, water, OJ, pineapple juice, milk (which tastes weird), apple juice, and usually something else. but the past week or so the selections have been limited, limited to OJ, water and milk. and i have to admit i am tired of drinking water and OJ. i can take the water, i mean its water, you have to drink a lot of water to get tired of it. but the OJ.........ugh i really cant take it anymore, i want my apple juice back! or my pineapple juice! something else. i have been drinking about a liter of orange juice and 2 bottles of water a day and i am about to go to 4 or 5 bottles of water a day because the OJ i think is starting to burn a hole in my stomach because of the citris. the food is ok, i guess. lots of beans and rice. and an ok variaty of food. now onto the kisses part of my title. there is a girl here who i think likes me (yikes!), and as custom here, when you go to a table of people (and when you leave) you shake the guys hands and you kiss the girls on the cheek. well while at the table i get a few more kisses from her, and a few more, and some more.....i think you are catching my point. well i have been nice to her and have been smiling and doing all the things that you can do when you are not interested in someone who is interested in you, so im having a fun time with that. and then on top of that i am in my room watching die hard 2 in spanish when another guy comes in who is friends with my room mate. he speakes pretty good english which is nice and he asks me before he leaves if i am ready for the Argentina man kiss, which i have not recieved yet while here. i say no, and as he leaves he kisses david (my room mate) and myself. the kiss is the exact same as with a girl.....only from a guy. it was kinda weird im not going to lie....but i dont know its ok, i mean here its normal so i guess i should get used to it. this week is week of prayer and the speaker is good. he is a guy from loma linda and he doesnt speak spanish so he has to talk though a translator which is nice for us aca people because we can actually understand whats going on. week of prayer goes until satruday and there is no school on monday, so i think that sunday morning i am going to leave with a few other people to Rosario i think. so i should have a few more pictures to post on tuesday or wednesday. this is a short one....again because i really dont have much to talk about. i hope this message finds you all well. i miss you guys.

lars

school week 2

well its been awhile since i updated (again) but there really hasnt been much to update on. everything is going really really well. i need to go shopping though. i need a new alarm clock i dropped mine one to many times the other day, so it is no longer with us. and continuing talking about things that are no longer with us, i am very sad to say the Che is officially gone. we left him in Rosario the other week. i think he feel in between a bed and the wall. :( so hopefully someone will find him and that bright orange furball of a lion will have a good long life, either that or he will be thrown away and decompose in some trash pile for another 100 years, either way he will have a long life. so with Che gone its time to search for Che II or Che Jr. which ever is the general consences of the group is. last night was a very good night for me. i played volleyball for about 2 hours, and my ankle feels really good. its still got some good size to it but it doesnt really hurt that bad and last night showed me that i can jump and run on it pretty well. it was a tad bit tight this morning and it still is a little bit now (its about 3:30 pm now) so i dont know if i will play as much tonight as a did last night. but it felt so good to get out there and do something again. my weekend has started now. i dont have any classes on fridays so thursdays after 12:30 im free. actually im not. i have chior practice at 1:30 so about about 2:15 im free. i guess every year they have an ACA choir where only people from ACA can sing in it, and so i decided to join. im singing bass with Jon and a few other guys. the music seems to be pretty cool. sometime next week i will probably go talk to the band director and take a look at the band. they have been gone on tour the past week or so (im really regreting not going now) but he said he was in need of a tuba player so we will see if it will be worth my time or not. i have a 4 day weekend coming up this month, im thinking of going somewhere but i dont know where. hey all you people who have been here (nils, aaron, jon) you guys have any ideas where to go for a 4 day weekend? im thinking maybe Parana or Santa Fe but i dont know. there is a group of people going up to Mendoza but i dont want to go that far. well this is a short one, not much has happened. ohhh i think i might be at Machu Picchu for my birthday!! i havent looked at the dates in a bit but there is a chance that i will be there!! that would be so cool!!! well thats all for now. if you have any questions leave me a comment on here or email me jarsmars@hotmail.com. love ya all

lars