Buenos Aires, Argentina/ Montevideo, Uruguay Days 8,9 and 10

Wow,

I am kind of sorry I waited this long to write but we had a very hectic schedule. Our last night in Chile was wonderful. We had a wonderful meal at the Isla Negra that our guide recommended, and we can’t get over how cheap everything is. If I was a student again, I would do study abroad in Chile and could probably live for 20 or 30 dollars a day including a place to stay. Ok, so everyone decided to do some last minute shopping in the morning except me (I slept in) and surprisingly we all made our flight at everything was smooth.

Argentina started off great. There were no airport adventures of any kind. We have a better arrangement here. Instead of Masha, me and Ilyusha sharing a triple, Masha and I are rooming, and Ilyusha has a single. The first day we decided to walk around right after we got in, and we did, to the point that I couldn’t feel my legs!! We were absolutely exhausted when we made it into what turned out to be a very high end restaurant.

They served us complementary champagne and hors d'oeuvres, and offered us chocolates after our meal. I have to say that the whole meal ended up costing us about 10 dollars, so again pretty amazing. We had the restaurant call us a cab, but the cabbie wouldn’t take the five of us. We decided to walk. First of all, the restaurant was VERY far from our hotel, and second we started out on our insane journey after midnight. I have to say, we were all scarred. The only people on the streets were the homeless picking through garbage and all sorts of shady characters which I have named ´tenistye´. Also, earlier in the day we saw a lot of anti-US graffiti the funnies of which translates as such: ¨for USA :( picture of a penis) ¨ even though that particular one is funny, the knowledge that we are not liked added to our fears. It took us 35 minutes of intense walking where to reach our hotel. We walked so fast that we took all unnecessary clothing such as jackets and sweaters. It was definitely an experience!

Unfortunately our next day here wasn’t quite as eventful. We had a city tour, but our bus was filled to the brim. It took us about 2 hours to pick up all of the tourists from different hotels and the tour was in 2 languages. Most people in our group fell asleep. I left the tour in the middle because I had a stomachache, but the guys said that the rest of it was about the same. (I was sad that I missed the La Boca neighborhood but we can’t go back because it is VERY shady and tourists do not go there without guides).

I was also trying to get in touch with a friend of a friend whose name is Shar Khan every time I say that name Sereja erupts in maniacal laughter. Actually one time we were waiting in line in a store and Sereja started laughing for no reason, but very loudly. When we asked him what was so funny, all he could say as he was wiping tears from his eyes was ¨Shar goluboi¨.

Anyways the guys called me when they were done with the tour and I met them in downtown. We shopped around for a while and then went to a Brahms concert in the famous Colon Opera house. The piece was ¨German Requiem¨, and it wasn’t just good, it was absolutely amazing. I almost had tears in my eyes. However there is a funny thing that happened. First of all, every time there was a break in the music between parts everyone in the whole building coughed. It almost seemed like they were saving all of their coughs for that period of time and restraining themselves during the music. But the funny part is that the first time the music stopped someone started clapping. The whole room turned and said ¨SHHHH¨ since the acoustics in the theater are unbeatable it was the loudest ¨shhhhh¨ I have ever heard.

After the concert we met up with SHAR at the hotel. He was incredible. He typed up and printed out a sheet filled with different tango shows, restaurants and attractions we should see and attached business cards and directions. He went over everything with us and answered all of our questions. He was the perfect gentleman and he spent about an hour and a half with us. We all really enjoyed meeting him.

Today we went to Montevideo. Honestly we all hated the trip. It was a giant waste of time. 3 hours by boat in each direction was bad enough, but then we were carted off to a store for 20 minutes, then we ate lunch together and then picket up tourists from hotels in the city. Our actual tour started at about 2 but we had to wake up for it at 6:30 am.

The tour was in 2 languages again and we didn’t get out of the bus at all - not counting 5 minutes here and there to take a picture. We saw people with horses and carriages on roads, little kids smoking and carrying cement. It was very depressing all around. We were finally deposited at a mall and given an hour.

Here my little group of friends and I decided to separate from the group an meet them at the port. After walking around a very expensive mall, we decided to walk around the streets, and the first building we see is Hillel. So we went in to check it out. It was a highly organized building with a gym, a library, conference rooms and a cafe. The people were very friendly and a woman named Deborah (the director of Hillel) showed us around the whole building. There are about 20,000 Jews in Montevideo. They are Zionists and Uruguay had a huge percentage of Jews making aliah to Israel after their economic crisis. It was very interesting to meet these Uruguayan Jews. It seems that Hillel members from northwestern and U of I visited them in the spring for alternative spring break.

We ran out of time and had to go back, so we grabbed a taxi. On our way to the port we actually drove through a rich, beautiful waterfront neighborhood, which changed some of our impressions about Uruguay. This was like being in Miami. We got on our boat and came back. Now we are starving so I have to stop before everyone has me for dinner. I will write more later.