"Spring" Break pt.1: Driving Through the Andes and the Importance of Listening to Customs Control

So after a brief fifteen hour bus ride to Mendoza, me and my friends Sarah J, Brenna and Lizzie hopped on a bus for Valparaiso, which is a port city on the coast of Chile. The bus took eight hours, but felt like longer because we had to get off the bus to go through border control.

A note to travelers: when a country says "don't bring produce across the border, we'll make you pay," they mean it. Both literally and figuratively. A woman on my bus tried to bring AN APPLE across the border, and after an hour and a half hold up (by which point we all wanted to flog her), she had to pay approx. $170 American for that piece of fruit.

Anyway. The Andes Mountains. Very pretty, very much larger than these photos make them out to be, and very twisty turny.

Yeah, we drove down that. And I may have raised my hands in the air like I was on a roller coaster more than once...

Three other shots of the Andes, where I have decided I want to build a cabin and be a crazy old hermit that gives water and fruit and sage advice to wayward wanderers.







I'd write about more of my trip in this post than just a bus ride, but the Internet isn't giving mama any sugar today.

Home Sweet Buenos Aires...

Hellooo!

I`m back from my fantastically awesome "Spring" Break, and I have to say...

I never want to take a bus again as long as I live. If my calculations are correct, I was on a bus for a total of 61 1/2 hours during my ten-day break. Some of the movies they showed on these buses included:
-Transporter 3
-Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
-Lakeview Terrace
-The Best of Mana
-The Women
-Latin American music videos from the 1970s

I started losing it around Orsono.

Here´s a lovely illustration of where I traveled.



Right now I`m playing the catch-up dance with my classes and internship, but I will definitely post later some photos and commentary on exactly what I did to terrorize South America.

Sometimes I wish I were an Asian stereotype...

...but I'm not. I'm a little white Jewish girl with a serious penchant for procrastinating. Now I have two midterms tomorrow that I still need to study for AND I need to pack for Chile and Bariloche.

I blame surfthechannel.com, the final season of E.R. and Carter's successful kidney transplant. Damn you, Doctor Carter, for entertaining me and making me smile at your anesthesia-induced cuteness when I should be miserable and up to my ears in Spanish worksheets. Damn you to...doing a pelvic exam on a she-he with a rash or something.

I'm cranky when I should be studying.

Anyway. Tomorrow, after the academic apocalypse I'm off to Chile! A light at the end of the tunnel! Have a wonderful weekend everyone, and talk to you again in 10 days!

My New Housemate

So my house brother and friend Nacho is a med student. And apparently, in Buenos Aires they let med students take home unclaimed skeletons from cemeteries to play with.



I named him Earl.

Here's to World Enough and Time...

I'm really trying to ignore the fact that my semester in Argentina is almost halfway over but it's staring me in the face.

To borrow some imagery from "The Time Traveler's Wife," it feels like I've been at the top of a roller coaster. The first two months here I was kind of chugging up hill, getting used to things and just having a relaxing time. Now I'm at the final two months, and every day goes by faster and faster and my mind is screaming, "hurry up and experience everything, because the ride is almost over and you don't know if you'll ever be back again."

Happy happy thoughts.

Anyway, my midterms start this week and after that I'm off on Spring break! I'm going to Chile to explore and unleash my nerdy side (thought: do I have a nerdy side, or am I just all nerd?). I really want to try and visit all of Pablo Neruda's houses. There are three: one in Santiago, one in Valparaiso, and one in Isla Negra. I think I can do it.


If you didn't know, this is Pablo Neruda. He was the winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, a Chilean diplomat, nominated to the seat of the Chilean presidency...and one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. Neruda HANDS DOWN bitchslap Shakespeare is my favorite poet, and I've been spending a lot of time this semester learning to read his poems in their original Spanish.

Know this man. Love this man.

If you love me, you'll begin to read Neruda's poetry. I recommend starting with his first book, "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair." It's really been freaking me out down here how few people from my program know who Neruda is. It's also really depressing. I want his memory to live on.

And on a light note...after Chile it's back to Argentina to visit Bariloche, the chocolate capital of Argentina. Located in the north of Patagonia, it is also a city apparently populated by avid gnome collectors. Good times shall be had.

Turning 21 and other things of some importance

So people are actually reading this thing...and asking me to update it? Definitely not the type of response I was expecting, so thanks everyone for reading it and encouraging me to continue!

Not that I would stop without your support...I like to think that I´m kind of a big deal.

Fun Fact: Briana googles herself quite a lot.

Anyway, here´s a quick Argentine update.

My 21st birthday was on Sunday! And I have no pictures of my birthday party from Saturday night! I was just too lazy to take any. But anyway, it was awesome. Here is a very faithful re-creation of what occured, brought to you by Google Image search. Not appropriate for minors!

My friends down here and I went to my favorite pizza restaurant in Buenos Aires, Romario´s. It was very tasty.



During my dinner, I began my first drink as a 21-year-old. It was a chopp of Brahma Beer. It tasted very legal.


Afterwards, my friends and I took a cab to a really funky club called Tazz in Palermo.


We drank cosmopolitans...


And tried to crash a private party. We didn´t know what it was when we tried.


Anyway, around 2am some of my friends got tired and went home. We had a field trip early in the morning, so they wanted a good night´s sleep.


Me and my friends Amanda and Sarah J on the other hand, decided that sleep was not a necessary tennet of attending a field trip. We stayed at Tazz for a little while longer and danced.


On Sunday morning, we went with IES to the town of El Tigre...we were very very tired. I was happy it was my 21st birthday, but I just wanted to curl up in a little ball and sleep.


Yes, I know you guys expected my 21st birthday to look like this:


But I´m classier than that.

Sure, watching too much TV is bad for you. And breathing in too deep will make your lungs explode.

Hey, I don't know if this company exists in the United States. If it does, has anyone seen this music video? It's my life right now.



I love Argentine television a little too much. There is a television in my room here and that's something I'm definitely not used to. There's always been one in my dorm at Ithaca, but because I had a roommate that's not one that I could turn on whenever I wanted, to whatever channel I wanted. Also, I finished all the books I brought during my first week here and don't want to spend money on more.

Anyway...Argentine television. First of all, the censorship seems to be nil. Know those special "call a sexy friend" type commercials that come on after midnight in the States? Here they're on ALL the time. On every channel. That's right, Disney Playhouse. I'm looking at you. There seems to be an abundance of Christmas-themed ones lately...

And exercise products! Belly busters and other weird torture devices abound. I feel like in the United States we have transcended these products...and take lots of pills instead.

Different channels too. No NBC, ABC, CBS yada yada yada. There's some national stations, like Cronica TV and Telefe. And then there's the Universal Channel, the Warner Channel, and the Sony channel. They all have pretty decent selections, lots of familiar shows.

Sports stations? Bajillions. All soccer, of course.

Telenovelas abound. Love love love. And the music channels are glorious! Again, very little in the way of editing. Music videos that typically aren't shown after midnight in the United States, like say oh, Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" and most of the Prince catalog are shown at like 8am here.

I've always been a bit of a couch potato, but this is getting ridiculous.