The past two weeks has been crazy! The last week of my winter spanish class went smoothly, and I got an A, so thankfully my GPA will not suffer from being abroad :)
We had a long weekend this past weekend, so four friends and I went to Iguazu falls, 18 hours north of Buenos Aires by bus, to the most amazing waterfalls I've ever seen. The park where the falls were had tons of pathways to walk through, and we got a guided tour through all of the walkways. It was really cool because they took you right up to the mouth of the falls, so you got really close! We also went ziplining through the Argentinian forest and repelling down the side of a cliff, which was really awesome. The 18 hour bus rides were pretty uneventful, a lot of sleeping and reading.
The past few days I've had orientation, where we learned about the school, got descriptions of classes, and registered for our courses for the semester. It was very different than registering in the US because everyone was guaranteed the classes they wanted no matter how many people already signed up for them. I signed up for 5 classes but am only taking 4 for the semester, but my schedule is awesome! I definitely have mondays off, and if I get the course equivalency that I hope I get, I'll have fridays off too! I start class the 8th of August.
Tomorrow UCA is taking us on a trip to go to an estancia (ranch). It's an all day event and we get to ride horses! I'm really excited to see what it's like and find out what we're doing, because like a typical Argentinian organization they haven't told us much about it.
Saturday I'm leaving for Santiago, Chile! We're taking a bus there, which should be around 22 hours. I'm really excited to see what it's like there, and we've already planned a couple day trips. One of the days we are going to Valpariso, which is a really pretty neighborhood on the coast of Chile. Another day we are going to see the president's house. On Thursday we're taking a bus from Santiago through the Andes mountains to Mendoza, and I hear it's going to be a beautiful ride. We're spending the rest of the week until Saturday night in Mendoza, and my birthday is on Friday! We are going to rent bikes and bicycle to different wineries all over Mendoza, and I will be happily drunk off Argentina's best wine :)
My host mom told me yesterday that my Spanish has noticeably improved over the past couple weeks, and it made me super happy! All my friends here and I have decided that we need to start speaking more spanish to each other, because we usually speak english when we're around each other.
Also, two new girls from the US just moved in this past weekend and are going to UCA with me. They're really nice and I'm excited to get to know them for the rest of the semester that we have together.
I can't believe I've already been here almost a month! Time flies by so quickly. I am also staying really busy so I suppose that also explains it. I'm really happy that I've had the opportunity to travel a lot and really explore South America, but I also can't wait until I get to spend more time just hanging out in Buenos Aires.
Until next week,
D
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