Grab some popcorn and a cold drink, this is a long one

Well it is 12:20 am on Thursday the 12 and I am at a person’s house who I met probably about 10 hours ago. But wait, before you start yelling at me for being at someone’s house who I just met let me explain. Well, actually let’s start back last Sunday. Sunday started out a normal good Sunday, except for the fact that all ACA people were super super excited about going to Buenos Aires for a few days. Also, everyone was excited that that night was a banquet. It was a costume banquet and I was supposed to go, but I didn’t have any ideas as what to go as. So all day I was trying to think of something, anything to go as. The theme was supposed to be a super hero theme, so I was trying to think of things along those lines when I realized that not every person was going to as a super hero. So with that in mind I still had no idea what I was going as. I talked to a few people…..nope nothing. I was however, able to convince Nolan to go, but like me, he had no idea what to go as either. As the day turned into evening and evening into banquet time, people were running all over the dorm getting the last things they needed, Nolan and I were sitting in my room, watching a movie, “trying” to think of something to go as. As time kept getting closer and closer Nolan and I had thoughts of not even going. But I really wanted to go, especially because I heard that they have good food there. So Nolan and I were able to come up with something to go as, he went as a nerd (most people thought he was just dressed normal) and I went as a surfer (I got a few laughs but not from a lot of people). The food wasn’t all that amazing, but the costumes were great. Transformers, Wolverine, Men in Black, Superman, Cat Women, Tinker Bell, you name it and it was there. I was very impressed with the costumes, people here go crazy for things like this, I wish it was the same back in the states. The party got done a little after midnight and most everyone’s thoughts were…….”must have sleep, I need sleep!!” that was not the case for Nolan and I. The bus that we were to take for Bs As (Buenos Aires) was to leave at 5 am in the morning, and I hadn’t even begun to think of packing. So Nolan and I went back to my room, finished watching the movie we had started before then watched another one. At that point it was about 3:30 so we both decided to go and start thinking about packing. Soon enough everyone was at the bus stop getting ready to take off for Bs As. Ok I’m super tired so I’m going to go to bed and I will continue this tomorrow.

12:30 pm. It is now just about 12 hours later so I’m going to continue my blog. Ok so we left for Bs As. Since it was about 5 or 5:30 am most of us found a seat and just about died. Most of us hadn’t slept the night before (me) so we were ready to sleep for most of the 6 hour drive to Bs As. When I finally woke up, we were just passing the Boca stadium, about 30 minuets from the hotel that we were staying at. When we pulled up to the hotel we could all tell that this was going to be a nice, nice hotel. The problem was that when we all first got there our rooms weren’t ready yet. So we had to leave all our luggage in a random room and leave for lunch (at this point it was about 12:30 or 1 in the afternoon). We ended up going to the same Adventist buffet we went to our first day here in Argentina almost 2 months ago (man it has been almost 2 months!!!!). After which we went to a Plaza that was close to the hotel. We couldn’t spend to much time there because soon it started to rain so we all had to run back to the hotel. That night we went to an opera like thing. Only it wasn’t in an indoor opera house, it was an outside live action thing with horses and people doing all sorts of things. It’s hard to explain but it was a history of Argentina in opera form with singing and all those things but at the same time it wasn’t a standard opera thing. It was in a big corral thing and they would have people come in on horses and act out battles and have people dancing and all sorts of other cool awesome things. When that got over we were all given permission to take off until midnight to go get food, or to do whatever we want. I went out and got food with a few people and just enjoyed the very nice warm evening that we had that night. When we got back to the hotel we watched a movie then went to bed. Now this was when I had the biggest problem that I experienced at the hotel. I was staying with Nolan and Erich (no they weren’t the problem) and right outside our window was the street. Now I didn’t think about this until I tried to get to sleep that night and realized that about every 9 seconds a bus would pass by the hotel and our window. Now usually that wouldn’t be a problem but cars and busses here don’t have mufflers, and if they do then they are all rotten and used up. So at about 3 in the morning I woke up to hear a bus driving by sounding like a train about ready to blow up or something like that. It was pretty bad, I couldn’t get to sleep for over a hour. The next morning we all got up and took for the La Boca. La Boca is a super cool place to go. I really cant describe it, I will have pictures up so you can look at them. But all the buildings are painted really cool and different and they are all just cool looking buildings. After we left La Boca we went to a Cementerio de la Recoleta. But this isn’t like an average cemetery. This cemetery is for the rich and famous. At this place you have small mansions as peoples tombs. The whole place looks like a small city with all these tombs all around you. All this place needed was someone to give you a map at the entrance and street names along some of the tombs and you had a small city…..of dead people, kind of a weird thought. Well while I was wandering around this place taking pictures I realize that I have no idea where anyone of the ACA group is. I ran to the entrance and couldn’t see anyone so I ran back inside and started to scan everywhere and I still couldn’t find anyone from the group. Finally I was able to find a few girls who were with one of the leaders. From the cemetery we went to a museum that was about a 5 or minuets from where we were and that was ok. I’m not a huge fan of art museums. I did think that the stone tablets they had from Mexico was pretty cool, but other than that I didn’t really like it. After the museum we all piled back into the bus and went to one of the nicest parks I have ever been to. It was pretty big and had a wonderful rose garden in it. I have a few pictures from the park but I was getting to sidetracked with everything there that I didn’t take very many. Actually now that I think about it, it was the park before the cemetery but I don’t want to go back and change all that so you can just imagine that’s how I wrote it. Anyway, after we got doing those things Nolan, Anna, Eline and I went out to get some food at an Indian place. It was so weird to see people from India, who look like they just got to Argentina from there but who spoke perfect Spanish, it just kind of threw me off a little bit. The food was pretty good, I had a chicken thing that was pretty amazing. When we got done, we went to go see a movie. Being in Argentina we figured it would be appropriate to see an Argentine movie, so we did. El Secreto de sus ojos, or something like that. It was pretty good. Before the movie started I was thinking, ‘ I think I know enough Spanish to be able to get the jist of what’s going on.’ I was wrong. Well in some aspects I was wrong. I was able to keep up with what was going on, but barely. There were times where all 4 of us just looked at each other with looks of stupidity, confusion, and curiosity. The movie was about a detective who was trying to solve a murder/rape and it kept jumping to 25 years in the future where he was writing a book about the same murder/rape. It was pretty interesting but it was a little weird sometimes too. But our movie cravings weren’t done yet. When we got back to the hotel after the movie was done, we opened my laptop and watched another movie. When that ended we all went to bed. The next morning we all had to pack our stuff up and check out of our rooms and head to this building that is a replica of some other building that I can’t remember the of. (yes dad I did just end a sentence with a preposition and I don’t care J). Well at the end of that tour the group was free to do whatever they wanted until the bus left at 11 that night. I had taken the liberty the week before to fill out a leave slip, allowing me to stay in Buenos Aires though the weekend and my cousin Bri has a friend of hers who is Argentinean and he just so happened to be in Buenos Aires for a few days. So I called him up and I jumped on the train and headed north. Riding the train was a bit of an experience. I have ridden trains before but the trains I have been on are usually fairly quite and the stations are never very full. Well this station had probably 1000 people walking around or standing in line and the train always has entertainment. People are trying to sell you stuff and playing different instruments to try to convince you to buy a CD or something else. After waiting in line for about 20 min to find out that I was in the wrong line, moving to another line and finally getting my ticket, I was on the train headed north. About a half hour later I met up with Ariel. We walked from the train station to the house he was staying at where I met some of Ariel’s friends ( I don’t remember some of their names and the ones who I do, I have no idea how to spell them). Now this is the house I mentioned at the beginning of this small book I’m writing. The lady was on the phone when we got there so we had to be super quite. Once she got off the phone she introduced herself (don’t remember her name either) and asked me where I was staying. Not having time to figure that part out yet I told her I didn’t have one yet, and that I would find something later that night. I thought she was going to laugh at me as she told me that I was going to be staying at her house that night.. Shortly after, 6 of us headed out back to the train and went north to Tigre. In Tigre we went on a tour of some of the islands around the delta that Buenos Aires is built next to. It was super pretty and super fun, that is where I also finally bought my first Mate cup. We also did a little bit of shopping and walking around. That day was one of Ariel’s friends’ birthdays, so we all went to a wonderful restaurant to celebrate his birthday. Dinner was amazing, I love steak here it is amazing. At this point it was about 9:30 or 10 in the evening (which is a normal time for people in Argentina to eat dinner) and we started to walk to another friends house and of course on the way we stopped at an ice cream shop and got ice cream. When we got to this other persons house we were all invited in and given coffee or in my case tea because I don’t like coffee (although I have been getting used to it). At about midnight we went back to the house and that’s where I wrote that little bit from before. The next day I went to coffee with Ariel and packed up my stuff and he and I went to the bus station so he could look at tickets to Chile and I could look for a ticket back to the school. When we arrived at the station we said our good-byes and went our ways. I looked around for a ticket but didn’t have much money on me so I left in search of a bank and a hostel. I looked at probably 3 different places before settling on one in the San Telmo district ( I think I walked a good 5 miles or so around town looking for some place to stay). When at the hostel I met a nice girl who had just arrived to Argentina. Her name is Josee and she is from Calgary, Canada. She is spending the next few months in South America traveling around. Well this made me excited because now I had someone to travel around with. The first afternoon at the hostel she and I went and got some pizza. After which we went back to the hostel and hung out and a relax full evening talking to a guy named Craig. Craig told us about all these hikes and adventures he has had all over the world. This guy is crazy, he has been to New Zealand I don’t know how many times, hiking all over the islands there. But its not just New Zealand he has been to it like 30 some odd other countries he has been to. It was super interesting to hear his stories. The next day I went back to La Boca because I wanted to spend more time there then when the whole ACA group had before. While there it decided to rain, but not just rain, pour like none other. I think it rained like 6 or 7 inches in about half an hour, it was quite incredible. When I was done sight seeing I jumped on a train back to the hostel and from there to find some food. After a nice little something, Josee and I had a nice night out on the town walking around and having a wonderful time. The next day I went back to the bus station and bought my ticket for the trip back to school and did a little bit of looking to see about how much a ticket is going to cost from Barilochie to Buenos Aires so I know for when I go to Patagonia for Christmas. Then the rest of the day just walked around the city looking at different areas. That night was pretty cool though. Saturday night was The Night of the Museums. It is a world wide event where tons and tons of museums open their doors until 2 am and have free admission. So Josee, myself and a couple of people we met from Austria went out and started to look at museums. We actually only went to one, the Tango Museum, which was super super cool. They had live music and it was awesome to read about the history of tango. On our way to another museum we got side tracked by some of the local music that was going on everywhere in the city. Buenos Aires alone had 150 museums that were open and almost all of them had some sort of music or show going on. At about 12 we decided to head back because most of the lines were several hours long and none of us really felt like standing in line for that long, and it was also starting to get cold and windy and I was just in shorts and flip flops. Well needless to say Sunday my adventure had to come to an end. I slept in a little bit charged my laptop packed up and left the hostel. On the way I ran into a farmers market like thing where they were selling just about anything you could think of, from silverware to alpaca ponchos to pots and pans to anything. All the people there were dressed up and it was very cool to look at all the costumes and things that people were selling. This place was also huge, it took up several city blocks and it was packed in there tight, most of the isles were just big enough to fit 3 people in it. Unfortunately when I left that market thing I was a tad bit confused on where I was, and spent about an hour trying to figure out where I was. Fortunetly I had given myself plenty of time to do whatever I want so once I found out where I was it was easy walking another 3 miles to the bus station. Well I think that’s about it. Right now I’m on the bus headed back to school. I have about an hour and a half left till I get there and my laptop is about to die. I know I did more things than what I have written but it’s hard to remember everything and I don’t want to write every little detail that I did. I hope that all of you are doing well and if you have any questions don’t be afraid to ask!! I love you all and I miss you!!!

lars

Im back

Sunday night was the Festival of the Nations here. this is where all the counties here (well most of more represented ones) make a booth and have some sort of brief history and sell some sort of food/drink for the rest of the people there. we had been working on this for about 3 weeks. i and another girl (megan) were in charge of getting some sort of food/drink for this festival. but the biggest problem was that we couldnt cook anything, which when trying to come up with ideas for food really limits your options (no burgers, hot dogs). so megan and i decided on a drink, we did floats. so we needed ice cream and root beer. ohhh wait root beer doesnt exist here, next options....orange and sprite. and for ice cream flavors? vanilla and lemon. it was a pretty big hit. espically because we have been having higher than normal tempatures here. the heat we have been having now people are saying we shouldnt have until December, so if thats the case i really dont want to be here in December, it is going to be ugly. unfortunatly the drinks werent quite the hit that we thought they would have been. according to other people from here at the school not nearly as many people came as usual. i would say around 200 people were there and i guess there is usually about 400. after everyone gets done with serving food, most of the countries put on a skit or some sort of play (which of course we did). then of course afterwards we had to take down and get ready for the next day. but all in all everything went well with that. this last week has been pretty normal. the whole ACA group is going to Buenos Aires this monday to thursday. and since thursday morning classes are cancled that day, i dont have any other classes, so im going to stay in Bs As though the weekend and have a bit more chill time there which im really looking forward too. i have been planning out my christmas break plans to........PATAGONIA!!! im so excited im going to be hitting up several cities like Ushuaia, which is the southern most city in the world, and Bariloche and a few places like that. i will make sure to take a million and a half pictures and keep my blog updated very frequently (not like i have the past few weeks hehe). but i hope that you are all doing well and i love you all!!!!

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

School!

Ok so it has been almost a week since i have updated my blog, its about time i sit down and update it. wow ok so much has happened since last week. to start off, the ankle is doing much better. im not able to walk around pretty well on it and actually fit it fairly comfortable into my work boots, which are way more comfortable to wear than the plastic one. there is still some color to it and i have pictures but being the intelliegent person that i am i didnt get a cable for my digital camera and no one that i know has a cable that will fit or has a memory card reader that is working. i tried using Jon's and for some reason it doesnt want to work on my computer so i need to go to his room and try it on his computer and see if i can get them to his computer then transfer them onto my external hard drive then on to my computer. i will see if i can get that done tomorrow afternoon after class. that brings me to the next thing, classes. classes are going well so far. i think i mentioned before that im in the Advanced I group. and so far the only Advanced I class i have taken is my Composition class. i really like the teacher for that class, she seems to know what she is doing and doesnt talk super super fast, so i can usually keep up pretty well. the other classes i have taken are ortografia (spelling) and geography. ortografia will be hard. the teacher talks pretty fast and is sometimes hard to follow. that class covers things like where to put accent marks and all that fun stuff that you never want to think about but should. geography i think is going to be a good class. i really like the teacher, he talks slowly and even in english sometimes :) (espically when the class gets the glazed look on their faces). tomorrow i have class from 830-1230, 2 two hour classes, conversation and grammer, neither of which im looking forward too. im also thinking of adding a history class but i want to see how dificult these other 2 classes are before i take on any more classes. ok i think that covers all of that. so back to last week. thursday, friday, and saturday were normal days. i went to vespers friday night with my room mate and they had a presentation on a mission program they did in nothern brazil. it was ok, from what i could understand and from what my room mate was able to translate into simplier spanish. saturday was fun, they had an english speaking church for us ACA people to go to if we wanted to, which i think we all did. then saturday night was fun. there is a bowling alley here about a 3 minuet walk from the campus, and that is the place to go on saturday nights! the place was packed. it has about 13 or 14 pool tables and about 5 bowling lanes and they serve food there too (by the way, their steak quesadillas are amazing!!!). i was there until curfew at 1145. so i took off at about 5 min before we had to be back and crawled into bed and died. sunday afternoon was crazy because i was getting packed to go to Rosario! 13 of us loaded into a bus and took the 3 hour drive to Rosario. when we got off the bus we left the terminal and started to walk.....where we were walking i dont know. we ended up leaving out of the wrong end of the terminal and walking like 10 blocks in the wrong direction. and let me remind you im still wearing this stupid plastic boot! so after we get lost in some random part of Rosario we find out that we have a 25-30 block walk to get to the main part of town!! gah!! i was so glad that i had taken some pain killers before i got off the bus. when we were walking we found this great little resturant to eat at called The Rockfeller Bar. we all sat outside to take a much needed rest and ate some much needed food. from there we walked into the main part of town in search for the hotel the Jon had picked out for us. after seeing the rooms at the hotel we decieded that a different place would be better. so we checked out another hotel and settled on a hostil. it was a nice hostil. they were having some party when we were there and they had mate and empanadas and other goodies to eat and drink. after relaxing for awhile we went out to look at some of the beautiful things the town offered for us to see. we went to a cathedral and enjoyed seeing its enormous size. from there we went to the flag monument, which at night is beautiful when they light it up. from there we hit up a few other places including getting some more food from a local vendor on the river......best sandwhich i have had to date. so lets see, the next morning we got up and all of us needed to exchange money so we found a combio and got money then at that point we all needed food (because the bite size pieces of bread we had for breakfast didnt stick around long) and we found a little cafe called Victoria. it was a lilttle over priced for what i wanted but the steak was amazing!!!! we spent a good amout of time there, talking and enjoying our food. at about 2 we all took taxi's (because none of us had before and with 4 people splitting the cost its really not that expensive) to the bus station to take off for the school. while there we ran into another ACA guy named Reed, who was there on his own. he was not as fortunate as us to get on the bus we did. we got the last 13 seats on the bus to San Martin, he had to take a bus to Parana about 2 or 3 hours away, then get on another bus to San Martin another 2 or 3 hours away. but we all made it back safely. so i think that is it. i need to get to bed now because i have class at 830 tomorrow and its almost midnight now. i love you all and i miss you. i did post some pictures on facebook for you guys to see. hope you are all doing well.

lars