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