Wine me, Dine me...

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Hello again

So this past weekend, as forementioned, Joe, Eric and I went to Mendoza. We said goodbye to Jessica (still crying about that one) in Santiago, and continued our 8 hour bus ride into the foreign land of Argentina. We managed to get the front seats on the second floor of the bus (thanks to traveling friends for that recommendation) giving us an incredible view of the ride through the Andes. We got into Mendoza Friday night. Joe and Eric brought their bikes, and I hopped on pegs to get around efficiently. It was very evocative of childhood summers, aka it was fantastic. We managed to rent a room with 3 beds, a kitchen, a bathroom and a patio for about 40 bucks each for 3 nights.

Saturday we went on around a 25 or 30 mile bike ride (this time I was on my own, pegs get painful after awhile) around the city of Mendoza to explore the wineries. Apparently there are over 1200 in the area, so we didn´t quite hit them all. It was a spectacular day out however and we managed to spend very little money the entire day. We only did tastings at two wineries, though saw many others. One was Alta Vista, a fairly well known upscale joint where we tried their Malbec, Torrentes (sp?) and their super fancy wine called Alto. The other one we went to was an all organic natural winery that did a free tour and tasting. Both were quite good. We stopped and had lunch on the side of the road, and we were riding back to the city at dusk. All and all it was an awesome day.

That night we went to club that was kinda young but served stiff drinks and did a drag show. It was fun, but I have to say Chileans party better than Mendozians. Sunday we lounged in our apartment, wandered the city, and ate at this awesome all you can eat buffet. Apparently everyone takes Sundays off so stuff was mostly closed, but wandering the city was still cool and lots of people were out in the park enjoying the beautiful day.

Back at work I started my rotation of shadowing different Doctors. I´m pretty pumped about it if today is any indication. I shadowed a cardiologist today, who is a fantastic teacher. He also has a 4th year med student so everything is talked about and explained and he includes me in on all of it. I had a very satisfying moment too of knowing an answer to a question Paulo (the med student) didn´t know. Granted it was only because it was about cell potentials which I just learned last term in bio and I´m sure will have forgotten by 4th year med school, but still, it was pretty satisfying.

That´s about all I´ve got for now. As usual, more to come soon.

Love, hugs and kisses

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