URUGUAY

Amigos!!!
It has been a while! What a crazy beautiful life.
So my week was great, but weekend was better. Voy a explicar!
Primero: If you all didn't know I began classes at IUNA Movimiento for dance class (Modern Technique III) It is at 8 am Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays......... great planning on my part.........
However, I LOVE this class with all of my heart! I have been enjoying dancing so much and I have been making some porteña dancer friends! They are so nice to me and we have reached the "kiss on the cheek and talk about our week" friendship! Hooray! Me caen bien :) Classes at FLACSO are going well. Must do my work and learn as much as possible from the people around me.

Now to the real adventure, I want to tell you about URUGUAY.
My new friend from the FLACSO, Annelise, and I decided we were going to Uruguay. We booked our tickets and hostels and that was it. No research, no questions, nada. Just going. We met up friday morning after my dance class and headed for Buquebus, the ferry we would use to take to Colonia de Sacremento, Uruguay. When we arrived after a 50 minute ferry ride, we entered the station realizing........ we had no plan or map. Scrambling to find an atm, we withdrew 200 pesos uruguayan (realizing soon after that equaled $10 dollars American...... not the same as in Argentina) We walked next store to the bus station to buy our ticket to our hostel which luckily only cost 87 pesos Uruguayan (and they also accepted debit cards!). We walked down the street, found a map of Colonia and went into the old town. We explored around, took pictures ate some delicious food and had a lovely conversation with two Irish girls sitting at a restaurant who asked us for sun screen because their noses were burning. They told us how they were traveling for several months all around South America for vacation! What a lovely vacation! They spoke no spanish but had cute little phrase books to ATTEMPT to talk to locals. We kept exploring and found a cute restaurant to have a glass of wine to kill some time before our bus left. We ended up talking to two men from Belgium who were working in Uruguay to build a new port. We talked about issues in the world, America and Europe. They questioned us about our ways and we questioned them about theirs. They offered to buy us drinks and accepted water from them (since you have to pay for water in South America). In the end, we didn't realize how much time passed and had to run to the bus station. We tried to get money from the ATM and of course, it was out of order, the only ATM around. We had already paid for our ticket and we were off to Colonia Suiza, the country side. It was 8 pm at night and we could not see anything. Only trusting that our bus driver would stop at the right stop to drop us off. He did. No worries friends. We were picked up by Monica, the owner of the hostel, and driven to hostel in the country side. It was lovely. She made us cheese fondue for dinner (fresh cheese from the farm next to the hostel) and we DEVOURED it. We also enjoyed a lovely conversation with another Belgium couple who were doing a Around the world trip. They started in India and  were moving to the East hitting so many cool places. It is a year long trip! How cool is that! Only $4000 for 10 plane tickets! We slept soundly in our room and the next day explored the country side. So many vacas (cows). I tried to speak "cow" to them (like dory) which ended up them getting mad and trying to chase us...... Never doing that again. Great conversation, great scenery. We came back to enjoy a lovely lunch of pescado con arroz tortilla. Best.Meal.Ever. (besides the fondue). We talked to the owners in Spanish about Uruguay, Argentina, our program and of course, the United States. She called a bus for us but guess what..... you need Pesos Uruguayan to pay for it....... we had only $5 worth. We tried to reason with the bus driver by paying in Argentine pesos or having me stay with them while Annelise went to the ATM... no go. Luckily we found this out before getting on the bus because if not, we would have been dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Monica was SO kind and drove us into town to an ATM that worked (we had to go to two) and showed us the bus station so we could wait. We had two hours to kill (or so we thought) and drank some wine in a cheap restaurant and shared dark chocolate. However, when we went back into the store to buy more chocolate, the woman asked us why we were still here... we missed our bus again...... no worries. She exchanged our ticket for FREE and we got on the next bus at 7:30 pm...... we were supposed to leave by 3.........


We FINALLY arrived in Montevideo, we checked into our hostel, met some Brazilians and decided to head to an Irish pub because it was St. Patricks day. Miguel and Monica gave us a recommendation, so we went. Well it was not an Irish pub, it was American and we drank German beer...... not very Irish. But the bartender gave us the drinks as a present (he had a little crush) and we talked to this gay couple in the bar for 2 hours. They were trying to help the bar tender (Ivan, both were named Ivan) hit on us... they tried. We returned to our hostel at 2 am and decided to go to bed. Of course, I could not sleep. So I talked to a Brazilian who was in our hostel room named Marcio. He spoke Portuguese and Spanish but no English which was great! We talked in Spanish for two hours under the stars. It was a wonderful evening. They next day, Annelise and I found the beach (5 minutes from our hostel) and soaked up the sun! It was so nice to relax. We also explored Ciudad Vieja and shopped around at the ferrias. Montevideo is so calm, so peaceful and heavily armed with police..... unlike Buenos Aires. It was nice to walk around and not be bumped into or stared at. It was a lovely break from the intense city. Unfortunately we had to head back due to classes on Monday but we both agreed we would go back and explore more again! Three days was NOT long enough and we traveled most of the time!


We made it back safe and sound!


More stories to come!

Stay tuned!

Hasta luego!


Chau