Goodbye Argentina, Hello Peru

    22 hours of bus and three planes ACA made it to Cusco, Peru (I like the Spanish spelling of Cuzco better). I got about 3 hours of sleep total, but because i asked for mate de coca on the plane the altitude didn't bug me upon arrival. So yesterday we got to our hotel, which is super nice. Basically, after that all we did after getting off the plane was laying in bed and drinking more coca tea....to be clear it is not a drug and it helps mountains with the altitude sickness.

      Today, we got up, had the most ah-mazing breakfast a hotel has EVER had, ever. OH MY GOODNESS!! There was fresh squeezed papaya, orange and pineapple juice, prickly pear cactus fruit, melon...honestly i could list forever but that was one breakfast worth waking up for. We had a city tour around Cusco, and then ACA was set free on the town. I am soooo in love with Peru, the people are so nice, their Spanish is clear and easy to understand, i feel so at home in the mountains and in the greenery, they have amazing soft alpaca stuff and the best food on the planet. Everyone, come to Peru. Now. You will not be disappointed.

    This evening Kyle, Alex, Kate, Sapphira, Callie and I hiked up all of Cusco to a giant white Jesus statue on top of a small mountain overlooking Cuzco....Altitude sickness ain't got nothing on me, asthma ain't got nothing on me, Callie and Sapphira. On the way down some local pointed up on a tiny track train down the side on the mountain...so we trekked down in the dark and in the rain, yes it was probably dangerous but it was so much fun!! We all made it down with only half our pants covered in mud and we picked up two stray dogs on the way (Callie and i pick up strays everywhere we got, they love us!). It was quit and adventure....but don't even ask me how much money i spent in the artisan markets. Peruanos make some of the most beautiful things on the face of the planet. Honestly, I thinking i should just move here, buy an alpaca and live the life.

     Tomorrow we have to make up at 4:30am to get on a train to go to Macchu Pichu. It will be an all day trip, and I will be tired as all sin....But i am so excited!!!

Our room! These beds are so comfortable!!! 

Love this girl....Sapphira at her best :) haha 
This is our sink...i love it!!! 

 

This is the view outside my window in the hotel.

 

The other angle from our window

 

Old ruins of...i forgot either a monastery of an Incan temple....or maybe both?

View looking back to Cusco from the ruins.

 

This is in the main Plaza....it was a very bright but cloudy day...only rained 5 times.

A Decemeber So Hot

      Well i have decided that i associate holidays with seasons....and since its summer it can't possibly be December, ergo there will be no Christmas this year. I mean i hardly even knew it was Thanksgiving until i had to get in the kitchen and cook for the ACA dinner...something just so implicitly wrong about heat stroke and palm trees in the middle of what should be cold and cloudy and snowy. But i'm done griping about the weather...

      So this week if the first week of the second term, and as i mentioned before, ACA leaves for Peru at the end of this week. Its hard to motivate yourself to study for a test you are going to have a month from now, and all in between is vacation. But i digress, I will have to learn this week how to pack a weekend backpacking pack for a month. I blatantly refuse to go running around all of Argentina with a giant suitcase, Nope nope nope nope nope!!! Entonces, Peru will have two different climates due to the vast altitude different between Lima and Cusco, so i have to pack for rain and hot, in Ushuaia and Calafate its going to be cold and windy, in Buenos Aires it will be more temperate but i will need some nicer things and then Misiones is humid (im assuming) and jungley....I'm getting to the point where i am considering not taking anything at all. Because that is naturally the best course of action...when in doubt opt for neither. Its how I shop if i cant decide between two things i get neither, so the same principal should apply here, right?

         This year is starting to fly away...Its Peru to BsAs to Calafate to Ushuaia to BsAs to Misiones to BsAs to School...by then its January and i'll be back in classes by the 6th. From there its a month of classes then to Misiones in Feburary. March has spring break and i have no clue what i'll be doing but after that its April and the Brasil trip to Rio de Janiero....And by then we will be preparing to take the Spanish exam and leaving.... I swear i'm going to wake up on day and realize "hey its May already....when did that happen???" I mean i feel like i barely noticed October and November....Sheesh...Honestly i just got used to writing 2013...now its going to be 2014...i mean heck i can't even remember how old i am most of the time and i'm only 21!!

                So in recap....its really hot and there are mosquitoes on steroids therefore no Christmas.
      

Bimbo Bread

      Well....last night i may have brutally and somewhat hysterically murdered baby Bug... It was kind of an accident really. I was sitting on my desk talking to a friend and all of a sudden this little cucaracha comes scuttling out from under the bed and without thinking i gabbed a water bottle, leaped off the desk and smashed it to smithereens.....So...yeah i think Bug is dead. I feel a little contrite...
Don't laugh but i kinda miss my little antenna waggling, baby cockroach....i mean i don't want another one but Bug was kinda cute....Oh good God! Just listen to me. Becca liking bugs?! The apocalypse is coming, prepare yourselves.

      But in other news today is my last day of finals (do i hear an amen?!) and only one more to go!!! So after our grammar final, Callie and I went with Haroldo (ACA director here at the UAP) to go shopping for all the ingredients for our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow....let me just say, Wow. Good times were had by all. But seriously...so darn funny. I think we bought like 10kilos of carrots and over 7kilos of potatoes...and these grocery stores are small. People were looking at us like were had lost our marbles. As we took our three shopping carts full (i'm not exaggerating) of food to the register Haroldo picks up a loaf of bread, looks at it, and tells me to go grab another one. Why? Because the mark is "Bimbo" bahahahahaha.....that isn't a word in Spanish but he still wanted a different loaf....ahhh man. You had to have been there...I have never had so much fun shopping. Ever. Come to Argentina and shop with Haroldo...its hysterical!!!

     Entonces...yeah no that was all i had. :D

I Should Be Blogging

       I'm sitting here listening to one of my favorite songs Cold As Ice by Foreigner thinking what on earth should i be doing at 12:01am and suddenly i know! I should be blogging....kinda like the BeeGees song about.... You should be dancing yeaaaaa.... my family will understand, the rest of you sorry. Anyways....So its finals week part two, last week was the first half and i thank my St.Mary's education everyday because (no offence WWU) thats really the only part of my education that i feel like has really helped me do....like anything useful. Maybe i quit paying attention after i left SMS (in highschool) but i feel like thereafter i had everything i needed to succeed and everything else just made me use that information...is this making any sense? I'm a little scatterbrain. OMG DID I MENTION MY SISTER IS GETTING MARRIED!!!!!! Yes finally, i am so gosh darn excited ^_^ AND DID I MENTION ITS GOING TO BE IN GERMANY??? Ahem....so Caity is going to marry Flo....i alway wanted to have a legitimate reason to say i have German family, so thanks Cait.  Oooo and i get to be in it!!! YAY!! I mean it sucks because she gets to plan it (when i say "gets to" i kinda mean has to) without me! :( I always dreamed about helping my big sister plan her wedding....you know go dress shopping and help pick out flowers and that kinda thing....darn you life, robbing me of helping my Only sister plan her wedding....Well i guess this means that after I spend a year running around Argentina i get to come home in the middle of May, be home with enough time to do laundry and pack again before flying to Germany to set up for Cait's wedding and the end of May. Talk about jet lag. But it will be so worth it....But i swear I will throw a legitimate tantrum if i don't see Nate before I fly off to another foreign country. I digress....so Finals week! In case you are wondering this is actually how my brain works, i bounce from one subject to the next and they are all in there and i am perfectly capable of completing the thought...it just takes a minute. Anywho, the first week was terrible, i honestly just ran and studied. That's it. No lie. I am dead beat tired....But its ok because its just an oral test tomorrow, two written on Wednesday and i'm done with trimester uno!
      So....basically i have decided to stop hunting for the baby cockroach who may or may not still be lurking around my room because...i mean Nate says they are friendly so maybe it just needs a friend, right? It wagged its antenna at me the other day when i was chasing it around my desk...i took that as a friendly gesture. So as long as Bug stays out of my way and off my bed and desk, Bug can chill for a little while...yes i name the baby cockroach Bug. Lets see what else...oh this morning i was awoken at 9am by what i thought was a bomb going off outside my window....it was not a bomb.... the thunder is so loud here you can feel it in your chest...kinda like when you are in a car with an insane stereo system and the bass drops and it pounds through your chest...like that but scary as hell. It might have been cool if i knew thunder could do that and maybe if it hadn't woken me up. But as is, i leapt off the top bunk and slammed my windows shut before hiding under my covers wondering what on earth was going on...incidentally i went back to sleep with no problem but man...that was one heck of a way to wake up.
       Oh hey...its November...in fact this Thursday is Thanksgiving...you know when not in North America Thanksgiving seems kinda silly...to celebrate here i mean. For instance, its hot, there are palm trees, mosquitoes, i'm taking finals....speaking Spanish, you know? It just sounds weird to eat turkey and stuffing in this environment. I wonder if i will feel this way about Christmas too...

Ramblings Of A Workout Addict

        Well its the middle of November and today was the first day of finals....what the heck?! I don't remember having finals this early before. Is it just me or is that crazy early?! But hey i'll take what i can get...I mean it's this week and next week then its December. The first week of December is the first week on my second trimester here, but get this, we leave for Peru the second week of December...now if you have half a brain you are thinking what the fun?! Well exactly....one week of classes then a month long break...if you ask me that's called bad planning but like i said, i'm not going to complain. So I have to muddle through two weeks of minimal classes and finals, then pick a new set of classes, go to them once, then get on the bus at 3am and go to Buenos Aires to catch a plane to Peru....We will be there for a week then we fly back to BsAs, and from there Callie, Alex and I hop on a plane to Calafate in Patagonia, to see the giant glaciers,  two days later we fly to Ushuaia "el fin del mundo". We will be there about 6 days i think....then we hop on the plane to BsAs to see my parental units, Callie flies back to the USA and we fly up to Misiones to see the giant waterfalls. I just thought i'd cover all my bases, you know? Go as far south as possible and then all the way to the top of the country....gotta get that variety though. :)
   
     What else can I tell you about my life here....well i have become an excersize addict. Callie and i run 4-6 days a week, we do strengthening and toning exercises of all manner, and now we have started going to the Gym UAP (ok she went sometimes before without me, but anyways) to go gymnastics and stunting before our runs. Please, slap anyone that tells you doing a handstand is easy. They have either been practicing or there is something wrong with them if its easy...but anyways Callie and I went to do that today. I finally am starting to get the muscle memory so my form is vastly improving, which means i don't completely suck! It takes a lot of muscle work i'm not used to, but i like feeling sore....makes me feel like i accomplished something. I just wrote my mom practically an essay on this but seriously guys there is nothing better than waking up in the morning and jumping in front of the mirror and seeing all that hard work, sweat, and time put into working out paying off. Callie found a little meme thingy that i like "Work like an ox, sweat like a pig to look like a fox." Its kinda our inspiration for the hours of pain and cramps and blah blah...ok i'm rambling but its awesome. I never want to stop running ever again. I am literally getting anxiety about not being able to run on my month long travels... but i will figure it out.

Life is Beautiful

      Today was one of those days that starts out seemingly normal and ends so well. Callie kicked me out at 8:10am per request, went to breakfast, went back to bed where i dreamed about mice, which normally would be great but there were tons of them and they were crawling on me and that was not fun. Anyways went to class yada yada yada....now the good part. I went  to the gymnastic gym with Callie, Alex, Heather, and Ezequiel. I have never done more than a crappy cartwheels and today i was taught how to a billion awesome things that i don't actually know the name for. My favorite stunt was the wrap around, you jump into the guys arms and they swing you around the back then you let go and swing around the front and back to where  we started. Its awesome i basically just fly around, so much fun. To all my friends and family that told me "Becca you should be a gymnast you have the body for it" well guess what? You all were darn right. I've started and there is no way i am ever going back. I have always wanted to be able to do gymnastics, its like Argentina is giving me everything i want: i will become fluent in Spanish, i've made some unforgettable friends, I've never been more fit in my life, i'm learning gymnastics, i get to travel all over Argentina and to Brazil and Peru, and i get to see Penguins!!!!

 

This is called a camel...its very fun :)

Pictures from BsAs

 

Callie, Alex and Danny....my gymnast buddies :)

  

Welcome to La Boca, all my favorite colors in one place ^_^

A mural en La Boca 

 

 

Soaking up the sun with Callie and Victoria

 

Argentina's 'white house' which is pink... ^_^

 

Across from the Pink House

 

This place was so ornate and beautiful.

 

Beautiful old theature

 

Most beautiful park...that is the true color of those trees

 

A gift from Britain (the tower) and the memorial from the war against Britain

 

Para-para-paradise 

 

These ducks did not care that i was in front of these faces

 

I just love to hang out with beautiful people :)

 

My ACA boys photobombing

 

Yup....these are my friends

Now tell me you don't want to be in Argentina. 

 

This place looked like it was made for a big white wedding...so pretty

 

Toni being adroable

 

Can i please get married here?

 

This is my sexy face hahaha

 

Lost in translation..... please don't climbing the tree. Hahaha