Mendoza, Argentina!

Hello! Sorry it's been so long but not a whole lot has been going on, but now I finally have another adventure to talk about! So this past weekend I went to Mendoza, Argentina and it was so great! It was about an 8 hour bus ride but mainly it was so long because customs take FOREVER! Like how long it takes at the airport times 8. We left on Thursday night and had to go through customs at 4am and then finally got into Mendoza on Friday morning around 8:30am and then at 9am we left for a tour of the city. The city is so beautiful! It's surrounded by the Andes so you can see mountains from where ever you're standing. Also the town was founded in the 1500s but in the 1800s there was a massive earthquake that destroyed the whole city so when they rebuilt it they made it so there was a park every 4 blocks so that in the event there was another earthquake everyone could go to the park to be safe, i think thats right or it might be that its better for the buildings or something, regardless the city is so clean and beautiful!

One of the millions of plazas in Mendoza, this one was one of my favorites!

Another park we went to on our tour.

After the tour my friends and I went to this buffet type restaurant and the meat there was soooo gooooood. We ate so much until we were kind of in a food coma so we went to our hostel to take a nap until dinner because we were so exhausted from the bus ride and tour. For dinner it turns out the program took us to the same place we ate for lunch, which was fine by me because the food was great and it was all you can eat. After that we explored the night life for an hour or so but were so tired from the day that we went back pretty early. The next day we walked around town and did a little shopping and had brunch at this really cute restaurant. Apparently Mendoza is known for it's wine, chocolate, and meat so we felt that we should probably try all of those things, so after we shopped we went on a tour of 2 vineyards and an olive oil factory. Because it's not exactly wine season we didn't really see the vineyards but instead got a tour of the buildings and learned how they make the wine. We got to try a few different types and I'm not going to lie they all kind of tasted the same, but we learned all the right words and wine ettiquite to sound and look very sophisticated...

After our tour we went back to the hostel to rest before we went out to dinner and then a nightclub that the program had planned for us. It was about a half hour outside the city and the program had busses for us and dropped us off at 12am and said that we weren't leaving until 4am wooot wooot. It was pretty fun and the music was great. The group that we went with to Mendoza was mostly made up of people from Germany, France, and Sweden so it was fun hanging out with them. Then next morning we were so exhausted but had to head back to Chile. Overall, Mendoza was such a cool city and I'm kind of obsessed with Argentina and it's interesting how different it is than Chile!

Ali, Molly, and me waiting in line for customs on our way back from Mendoza. The whole drive was through the Andes and I could've driven on that bus for days because it was so beautiful!

This week I'm probably going to move into Starbucks because I have so much homework! Classes are definitely getting harder and the "I don't understand" card doesn't really work too well anymore. I still don't understand whats going a lot of the time, Chilean spanish is just so much different. It's crazy how much more I could understand while in Argentina. Our cab driver in Buenos Aires said that it's easier for him to understand Portuguese than chilean spanish... but oh well what can ya do. Also this week my mom is opening her store in our house and i'm so excitedddd! The food at my house is sooo good recently and I'm pretty sure this store might be the end of me, but i'm okay with it. Overall everything is going well, the language barrier is still posing some problems but i'm sure thats to be expected. I have to write a 7 page paper single spaced about any topic related to social violence (the class is called social violence) so I'm a little screwed for that one. They don't believe in double spacing here and believe me 1.5 spacing and double space are COMPLETELY different thank you very much. This weekend we don't have class on Monday so i'll have plenty of time to do my homework and then the next weekend i'm going to a Dave Matthews band concert in Santiago and then the next weekend i'm off to San Pedro de Atacama! Lots of things to look forward too!

Miss you all! Lots of love!