Long Weekend Vacations

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Jeez its been a long time since ive last written, I've really just been continuing to get adjusted and attempting to speak spanish with all the IFSA kids, which is much harder than I thought it would be! We have been going to the park most days after class and drinking Mate, which is this herbal tea that literally everyone in the country drinks all the time. You drink it out of this cup that is actually called mate and the herbs inside are called yerba. I'm not a huge fan unless it has sugar but its something i've got to get used to since people sit in the park for hours and drink it. We had an entire class dedicated to it with our spanish classes because its so important! And there are lots of rules to preparing it and passing it, like you have to pass it to your left, can only say gracies if you don't want any more mate etc....My host mom has turned out to be one of those extremely liberal mom's that our program talked about but I didn't think was actually true, she has told me now on many occasions that if my boyfriend comes to visit he can stay with me in the house (which i will never do! talk about awkward...) and that I can have parties at the house whenever/slash have anyone over that I want, and whenever I try and tell her where i'm going or what ill be doing she looks at me like i'm crazy because she doesn't need to know what i'm doing! It's definitely nice having the freedom but its taking some getting used to since i expected her to be a lot more overprotecting since her kids are only 12,13, and 15...but works for me!

Well this last weekend we had monday off from school because I believe it was the day San Martin died, he is a general who was extremely important to Argentina and Mendoza especially, not sure exactly what he did, I need to look into that, but we have a huge park named after him and every city has major roads named San Martin. So for the long weekend 6 of us girls took off to Cordoba, which is the second biggest city in Argentina and is absolutely beautiful!!! We took a 10 hour bus ride to Cordoba, but their buses are like riding first class in an airplane...the seats recline all the way and are very comfortable, we were served endless amounts of wine, free movie in english, and breakfast and dinner (though the food was pretty gross, as usual on these trips) I slept alright, i mean the roads here aren't paved too well so it was like riding in constant turbulance on an airplane but it could have been much, much worse! after the 10 hour ride we made it to cordoba and searched out the hostel we had booked beforehand, turns out hostel world never checked with the hostel to make sure they actually had space, which they didn't! so once we got there we were told they had no room for us, but the girl was soo nice and called her friend at another hostel who had room and got us booked there and gave us 20 pesos for the cab ride there! Our next hostel was called El Palenque and was very nice, yet extremely quiet from what we could tell to begin with...We spent the day wandering around the city and checking out churches, shops, and parks around the town. Its really a beautiful city and so clean!! We were shocked at how clean it was since it was such a big city because we were expecting it to be much dirtier and worse off! After site seeing for the day we went back to the little market right next to our hostel and bought some pasta and fresh veggies, which we never get!!! and brought them back to the hostel and made pasta with red pepper, carrots, broccoli, and tomatoes! it was amazing and so fresh, we hardly get any vegetables besides potatoes. We bought a couple bottles of wine and drank those with dinner, though I still don't really like wine i'm forcing myself to drink it because I know I need to start liking it in this country! After dinner things started to actually get pretty crazy in our hostel and everyone came out to play drinking games and eat empanadas and we all spoke tonssss of of spanish!! Someone at the hostel said everyone was going to this club and that they could get us all in for free, so at around 1 we all left for the boliche downtown. The girls and I had decided to do a game of points for the night out and whoever ended up with the most points won, though we hadnt decided what we would win just yet, the point system was that whoever had a full on conversation with someone in spanish got 15 points, whoever made out with an ok or ugly looking guy got 5 points, whoever made out with a hot boy got 10, whoever grabbed a guys ass got 5 points, whoever had theirs grabbed lost 5 points, if anyone threw up they had to go back to 0 points and had to sit out for 5 hours (throwing up was really unacceptable) cat received 2 points for riding the mechanical bull before it broke down, etccc it really kept the night interesting 😊 I ended up winning the game because I met "Kevin Hebert" who knows if that is his actual name...I went up to him in the club and and started talking to him but was told by his friend that he was from germany and didnt speak very good spanish, so I just walked away not wanting to deal with that. He followed me and asked if I wanted to dance in broken spanish but he was about 6'5 and there was no way the two of us would be able to dance haha so I dragged him off the dance floor so he could buy me a drink and we sat and talked at a table for a while, turns out the germany bit was a lie and he is actually from here in cordoba (just more proof of how extremely gullible I am) and at 23 is still living with his parents (very common here but still a weird thing to hear) he was actually a really nice guy and we chatted for a while, made out some, till i realized i really should go find my friends...he gave me a ring he had been wearing haha and for that and a few other things that night i was deemed the winner 😊 Well this has been an extremely long post and that is only one day in cordoba! Ill write later about our trip to La Cumbre a little city outside of Cordoba.
Hasta Luego!
Anna

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