Buen Viajes!!!

This last week has been pretty crazy! I got to NJ ok and together with four of my closest girls we flew to Argentina. I wasnt really sure what to expect when I first got here and so far it has proven to be a much different experience than I had anticipated. The first day was spent traveling....around 16 hours total (thanks Jenn for the "drogas") Our first day out we took a tour around the city so we could get an overall view of what Buenos Aires had to offer. My first impression was that it reminds me a lot of New York City. It is densly populated and the traffic is ridiculous. (thankful now for our chauffers) It has been great to finally have some practical experience using the Spanish I learned from all of those $100 textbooks in undergrad. The tour was almost a joke for us. It seems that many of the pictures and things people told us about the city are a tad oudated especially since nothing is as it appears in printed media and the words they speak are not adequate to describe the city. Whoever compared it to the "Paris" of South America was sadly mistaken however it still holds the adventure that our groups seeks year after year. Thanks to RiLee (she talks to everyone! anywhere!) we have made a lot of new friends from all over the world...(no stalkers named Michael like years past) Yesterday we decided to get out of the city so we thought we might as well just leave the country for a day. Bienvenidos a Uruguay....can I just say wow! We visited a river town called Colonia which sits on the river Plata that runs between the two countries. We had some amazing adventures and took some fabulous pictures. (ill post later when I have access to my laptop) Anyways today we went to the countryside of Argentina and visited a gaucho ranch. There we were able to ride horses (fast becoming one of our traditions), watch traditional dancing, horse races, and listen to live music. Best of all we got to have this huge "gaucho BBQ" full of homemade empanadas, chorizo, blood pudding, roast chicken, and one of their major exports...beef. It was delicious and all cooked on a huge outdoor fire pit with a method called "asado". Quite an experience. Anyways, that is all for now.....