Goodbye Arequipa!

Today is our last day in Arequipa.

I´m really going to miss it here, we´ve been here for 2 weeks.

I think everyone is starting to feel at home here, I suppose that´s a good reason to move on to... CUSCO!

Last night was fun.. well more funny.

Blake found us a `cool, hip place to go dancing´.

Hemm well I guess cool and hip people can be over 35....

Granted, we only stayed till 11:30, but it was still mostly old people when we left.

After we all went out to get juice(pineapple, banana), and ended up staying out pretty late.
All in all good night.





The next morning was a coffee must day, so Benji, Jonah, and I met up with Julie at the coffee shop and went over to the big market again.
I had my first fresh fig! (thanks Julie)

I also got to see cute puppies! Sadly they live mostly in a bag with other pups till they are adopted by someone :(



Jalen and I finished packing (about an hour ago), and left Martha our homestay mama.
I´m pretty sure I´m bag has gained about 8 pounds over the last 6 weeks.

Today I also found some mixed greens, it felt SO great to eat fresh veggies! Now my only hope is that I don´t need any of the imodium I´ve been passing out, a few people have `rumbles in the jungle´or ´super sonic diarrhea´, as we´ve been calling it.

I´m pretty dummed I still can´t post pictures! The internet cafe I´m at right now is awful.... they removed all of the usb ports, and the first computer I was on crashed twice.

Maybe Cusco will be better! (we get on our 10 hour night bus at 8:30 tonight)

Wow it´s March....

I´m still in Arequipa. Exept this week Jalen and I are staying with Martha!
She´s our homestay Mama, and she makes us wonderful (mostly)vegan food!
She also rents rooms in her house out... So if you ever want to go to Arequipa, Peru... You should call her!

Really cool things about Arequipa, Peru:
Everything is really cheap!
The people are easier to understand than Chileans.
The weater is wonderful.
It´s surrounded by mountains.
And they have chocolate.

Some not so cool things about Arequipa:
THEY DON´T HAVE WARM SHOWERS!
And that´s pretty much it.

Today Josie, Quinn, Wyatt, Kina, and I went to a neat and authentic market place with our Spanish teacher, they had some awesome stuff there!
The main reason we went was so that everyone who wanted could get jugo de rana (or frog juice). Yup it´s just what it sounds like.
A woman takes 2 frogs, knocks them out, peals them, boils them, puts them in a blender with milk, honey, quinoa, maca powder, and a few other grains, then she pours the juice through a strainer to get the bones and chunks out, andddd Bon Appetite!
The Market also had LOTS of meat, I think the worst was the bucket of cow heads....
But all in all I{m glad they don{t let anything go to waste... Or turn it in to a hotdog...
(Now for my homework I have to write all that in Spanish... Yikes)

Side note: If you have an Ipod touch, 3 dollars, and time to kill
you should get FIELD RUNNERS! (app)
Moving on....
I{ll have pictures soon... I hope, Friday at the latest!

Mas Arequipa

What happened to the entwives?

Quinn pointed out this picture in the all Spanish history museum today.
This week in Arequipa is our student run week, or "felx-week".

So here is Hanna and Jonah flex-ing.
This is a picture in the courtyard of the museum and church.

There are lots of (literally)street vendors here.

Arequipa day 3

Instant coffee.... Why?
Yesterday we had lunch in the courtyard of a church, and solved some riddles...

"There is a man in the desert, dead, wearing tights, and laying next to a rock. He has no bodily injuries, and the rock is related to how he died.

Who is he? and how did he die? "
FALAFEL!!!!!!!!!!
This is my rad 12 dollar sweater.

Ariquipa!

Starfruit! First time I´ve had it, not a fan... But I did get about 6 of them for 1 sole (aprox $0.40)

Quinn really liked em´so nothing went to waste.

This is a view of our awesome hostel!

2 small issues with it 1. no hot water. 2. even though they have a great view of the city at night, most of the hostel doesn´t hav a roof... and it´s rained everyday...
But they do have this great little puppy!

I think his name is Carlitos, and he likes to bite shoes.
The downtown area here is really great!

I got a cool 100% Alpaca sweater for 35 soles (or aprox $12.98), and walked around with Hanna, Jonah, and Jalen... On our way home we walked through the park/square and it was so gross.... 1000´s of pidgins...

They do remind me of home though, as a lot of them are about as fat as Chicago pidgins.

Atacama

In San Pedro De Atacama! One of the driest places in the world!

The next day we got up at 6am (ahh!) and got to see Flamingos!

Nobody ate breakfast because it was included on our tour, but we didn´t eat till about 10am.

Most people had a hard time not imagining grilled flamingo...

Listen to this and look at the next picture....
Mmmmm fruit!
Our bus buddy! he almost threw Jonah´s I phone out the window

pictures from last week....

Here is Terricita, Val, and me at Lake Cauhil.

Behind us are a bounch of stalls selling quinoa, salt, and honey mostly.

The lake!
These 2 photos are of Puntos de Lobos, it´s a popular surfing location, but not for me (maybe in 5 years?...) like most of the scenery makes me think of Lord of The Rings....

In Chile, well in a bus station....

The photos uploaded wrong.... So start from the last one :)

This is my host familia! (minus M.C.) Our(mine and Jalen´s) was great! They made us (mostly) vegan food(including QUINOA) and showed us around Pichilemu! They took us to Lake Cauhil, and Punto de Lobos. (Which I´ll post some pictures of).

(Julie)
we are white people! Just trying ta stay white.
I got burned pretty badly yesterday, I didn´t put enough white cream on my white skin.

And here is our first surf class, I thought it was awesome, even though I didn´t really get any waves till the next day....

Most people didn´t like surfing, apparently peeing in your wetsuit isn´t enough too stay warm.. :p

This is the view from my/our little Spanish school.

It looks awful and gray, but almost everyday it started out like this, nice and cool for my long walk from homestay to school... Then in the afternoon it got real nice, just in time for surfing!

Right before arriving in Pichilemu we stopped in Orsorno to get food... and found PEANUT BUTTER and whole wheat bread (Which can´t have been that natural as it´s still soft... I had some for lunch).

I forgot to post these!

These are from Bariloche, we went on a really steep and sandy hike, but at the top we got an AMAZING view!

It reminded us all of LOTR, So here is Josie, Jalen and Quinn waiting for the orcs.....

And below is Blake "bringing down the mountain"

It was windy....

Mom... You would have really liked this....

Waiting, waiting, waiting....

Just got off bus 2/3, the overnight bus, and kicking back in an internet cafe.
The over night bus wasn´t really bad at all, I slept almost the whole time!
And yesterday(in orsorno).... WE FOUND PEANUT BUTTER! AND Whole wheat bread!
Orsorno also had a lovely park we spent most of the day in waitig for our bus, did you know some parks in Chile have WiFi? Way cool.
I would post some pictures... But my cord in at the bottom of my backpack... Maybe tomorrow?...

a little more of Bariloche...

From this morning, Flavia, Jalen, me Benji, and Lani. Our 2nd to last spanish class, aww.

I´m really going to miss it, my spanish is probably 45xbetter now then it was, granted it has been 16 hours of lessons....
SOY MILK! I can feel the protein(12 grams) soaking in my body!

Also I think the name of the milk is a little funny... "Want some of my ades?"

Also this place is beautiful..... Just look....

Oh did I mention this place has the best chocolate EVER?!?!

If that picture didn´t make you want to come to Bariloche, I bet you do now!

.

Update 3/3 It´s 2/2!

Happy birthday Jonjon! I´m sorry I´m missing your birthday but I´ll try to get you something really cool here!

I hope you have an awesome day and eat lots of food!

Also good luck on your trip Loren.... please don´t die, I really like you.

Update 2\3 Hola Bariloche!

Okay so Bariloche is great!

So SO different from Buenos Aires.

It´s colder here, and by cold I mean like 60, nothing like what I hear is going down in the midwest right now.

Bariloche is also just so beautiful! It´s sandwiched between a lake and beautiful mountians.

Our homestay family is really sweet, their names are Kuky and Roberto, we also got to meet their grandson Tommy.

Our Spanish classes are awesome, I´m learning a lot of Spanish with Benji, Lani, and Jalen.

I wish I had more interesting things to say but I´ve spent a lot of this week sleeping my sick off.

I hope to look at some beautiful mountians and do yoga today!

Update 1\3 Leaving Buenos Aires

First off, so sorry, I´m an awful blogger.... Would you like to hear my long list of excuses? .... I didn´t think so, but I´ll tell you then anyways throughtout this blogpost.

29\1\11

In the morning we all left out lovely apartments and walked over to the bus station.

Ingmar and Julie did a really good job of herding everyone, and watching out for our large backpacks so nothing got stolen.

Then we waited for a little bit to get on our ´posh´bus, although, most things don´t stay posh when you´re with them for 24 hours.....

Hanna and I both got the BEST seats in the bus!(pictured above) Not only did we both have front row view (with optional shades for when we wanted to nap), but we also had the better side of the front row because our seats went really far back to the point where we could pretty much lay down :)

On top of that we get free water\soda\meals, score.

So at this point the bus sounds great right?

Yeah.. well I´m going to change that!

After a few hours of kind of scary driving, a poor little boy tried and failed to vomit in the bathroom... He got it all over the floor of the bus.

Blake asked the bus\waiter to clean it up, but he said it was the mothers job...

The mother decided to take a good hour or 2 to clean it up ...

Man nothing makes me bus-sick like puke rolling up and down the bus :)

Oh man the food!!! We had this great grayish, spungy quiche for dinner!

OHohoh I almost forgot to mention the fever I got on the bus....

LA BOCA

Blake´s spanish teacher took us on a tour of Buenos Aires yesterday, She told us about the buildings we pass everyday, about the parks, and about La Boca.

La Boca is this really neat, colorful, part of Buenos Aires.

It´s more or less known for being poor.

The local people there couldn´t afford to paint their houses, so they got little bits of paint where ever they could, and thus have really funky cool colored houses.

Subway!

-Photo credit Blake(bottom, left).

Jalen, Julie and I waiting for the subway(Quinn is in the background).

We´re going back to our really awesome apartment,

After one of our tango lessons with Alicia Pons.

She´s a really great teacher, so far we´ve got the rock step, running, salida, back ochos, and a few other steps (mostly) down.

Our last class is today, and tomorrow we´ll say Chau to Buenos Aires and !hola! to Bariloche!

Not so vegan #1

Medialunas...

I had a bite of Blake´s.

I was hoping for an amazing life changing experience everyone spoke about... But no, it just tasted like butter soooooo much.

El Ateneo and Harry Potter

Yesterday we went to El Ateneo, it was so beautiful!

I found the Harry Potter section, apart from the normal 7, they had "Quidditch A Través De Los Tiempos" y "Animales Fantastico Y Donde Encontralos"

I got one and Hannah got the other, Spanish Harry Potter reading party anyone?

FOOD!

After lots of walking we finally got some food!

Nomnom

And it was vegan!

Although I´m not finding lots of options... Clif bars are my friends :)

Welcome to Buenos Aires!

This is the view from my window! I´m on the 8th floor with Kina, Quinn, Blake, and Benji.

Yesterday after naps, yoga, and (mucho)coffee we went to the San Telmo market, and watched some tengo! After we walked back, ate food, and (I) got 12 lovely hours of sleep in my room :)

Today we´ll start our tengo lessons, then do some more exploring!

Oh comida!

A photo of my brunch.

'Dear vegan food,
I'm going to greatly miss you whilst in South America.
You are so wonderful, and enjoyable.
Love,
Claire

P.S.
I love you.'

I ate some cheese today, it was in preparation for not being 100% vegan in SA.
I also had a 'deep-dish' raw pizza for dinner.
I feel like it made up for the 3/4 oz of queso.

Post numero uno..

I'm Wisconsin a week before departure to Buenos Aries!
Mi mama es besucador bebe Sarah.
(Spanish = No muy bueno...)
"Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal" is helping expand my vocab ;)

Hasta luego!

Info about the trip is HERE