HOME!

I'm home I'm home I'm home I'm home!!!!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I landed safe after a day of traveling and I'm thoroughly enjoying my first night at home.

My dad was able to recover my photos from Iguazú off my memory card, so it officially looks like I'll have everything I lost when my laptop was stolen!!

I'll be writing a reflection later in the week on my experience, but for now my contacts are blurring and I think I need to catch up on sleep.

I love home.

- Meagan

An Iguazú Weekend

Before I start on how amazing my weekend was, I need to get this whole robbery story out of the way.  Yesterday I was sitting in a Starbucks with my roommate, and I left to go to the bathroom so I left my laptop with her. In the two minutes I was gone, a group of people distracted my roommate, and used that distraction to swipe my laptop off the table without her noticing. I had a major mental breakdown in the middle of the restaurant and I probably can't show my face there ever again but I did all I could. I filed a police report, and remotely wiped my computer using find my iphone, and that function went through today, so take that thieves.  Losing your laptop absolutely sucks, but i'll be home three weeks from today, and I know I can survive until then without any issues.

Back to happy talk.  

This weekend I went to Iguazú Falls with the group and it was quite possibly one of the best weekends ever! Unfortunately I lost the good files of all my photos from the weekend in the robbery, so the facebook versions will have to do.  

On Friday morning we left for Iguazú and of course, it was raining like it always is in Buenos Aires. We boarded our morning flight and made it to Iguazú before noon, and eventually headed to our hostel. Originally we were told we would be staying in a four star hotel, so we were all kind of upset to find out it was a hostel, but it turned out to be a really nice place besides the rooms we stayed in. The hostel had a huge pool and a restaurant and bar as well! On the bus on the way to the hostel a representative from an excursion company gave us brochures and we decided to do one of the packages that afternoon! It was pretty inexpensive, and we would be zip-lining, hiking, and wet-rapelling a waterfall! After we got to the hostel, we got ourselves situated and then headed out on our adventure. 

We started by getting into an open air vehicle, and our guide Andres showed us some of the more rural parts of the town on our way into the park. We were in a group with people from all over South America, which was pretty awesome.  Andres told us about Puerto Iguazú, and also informed us that zip-lining (or canoping, as they call it) would be our first activity of the day! We arrived at the location for zip-lining and I was beyond excited. Zip-lining has been on my bucket list, and what better place to do it for the first time than in the jungles of Argentina! The entire length of the line was 800m split up over three sections, one longer, and two faster. I wasn't nervous at all, and it was an absolute blast! 

When I ended up in the falls...

After zip-lining they told us to keep our harnesses on for our little hike, which turned out to be a leisurely walk to the wet-rapelling location. I was really excited for wet-rapelling, but as it turns out I was absolutely terrible at it.  The waterfall itself was 14m high, and it looked like it wouldn't be that hard. Unfortunately when it came to be my turn, I slipped before I could even take a real step and managed to body slam the waterfall rocks.  Once I finally got a footing I slipped again and ended up right in the waterfall instead of on the side. My knees took a beating from body slamming the rocks, but eventually I made it to the bottom to the laughter and applause of everyone watching... 

Wet-rapelling concluded our adventure for the day, and we climbed the stairs back up to our ride which took us home. After that we all got in the pool and swam until it started thundering, so we headed to our rooms and siesta-d for a bit. We were told that dinner would be provided for us, so we headed to the common area of the hostel where we got some drinks and passed the time before dinner! Overall the milanesa dinner was really good, and we had a great night. We met some obnoxious guys from Australia that tried to get us to hang out with them and kept telling us stories about the "Drop Bear." Google it.  

Saturday was the day I had been looking forward to on this entire trip, and unfortunately it was a little chilly an rainy. I'm not going to lie, I was an absolute debbie downer all morning because of not having a jacket or anything, and I was dreading every time it would rain. So for the morning I put on a brave face and went with it.  We took a bus into the park where we met our tour guide, Carlos. Carlos took the entire group to the train that would take us to the largest waterfall in their system: La Garganta del Diablo (The Devil's Throat). Once we got off the train we walked along a bridge which crossed over a river and eventually we made it. I have no true words to describe just how incredibly massive this waterfall was, but let me just say that niagra looks like a faucet.  We spent about a half our or so just appreciating the falls and the view that we have, and despite it being overcast and raining, the view was spectacular.  

We re-boarded the train and it began to rain again, and then we did some more walking through areas of the park. We took a break for lunch and to dry off and then finally the rain let up! We continued to walk and see some of the other amazing waterfalls along the paths, and the sheer magnitude of how many falls there were is just incredible.  Every stop seemed picture perfect, and my day really started to pick up then.  We eventually got to the bottom of one of the falls, and we saw all the people in ponchos because of the spray at the bottom of the platform. Naturally, we didn't have ponchos, so we all went to the edge and just played in the water and took silly pictures and laughed and it was wonderful. By that point, I didn't care about being cold or wet anymore, and it only made me more excited for what we'd do next...

The boat ride. We had an excursion paid for that would take us under the falls in a speed boat, and we were all extremely excited.  We made our way down the path to the boat, where they gave us rubber bags to store anything we needed to keep dry, and we were given life-vests and got on the boat! I don't think any of us realized how soaked we were going to get, but it was beyond anything we thought. First the boat took us to the bottom of a smaller set of falls, where we were able to take pictures until they told us to put our cameras away (I had a waterproof case). They got really close to the bottom and the water poured in the boat and we all just screamed and laughed. They then sped out of that area and started towards a HUGE set of falls, where they did the same thing until we were so close to the fast moving water that the boat was spinning and rocking like crazy! We were literally soaking wet with water, hair dripping not caring whatsoever about it.  

The view

The boat then continued back to the original waterfall for some more fun, and then down the river to our drop-off point. We were able to see Brazil, and then we got off the boat for our "jungle tour" which was basically just a time to get us back to our tour guides. We were all wringing out our clothing and we stopped at a little market before we re-boarde the bus.  After this adventure we headed back to the hostel where there was an asado! 

Attractive

For dinner there was different kinds of meats, along with some free drinks and salads, so we had a great night! We spent the night playing games and talking, and eventually we all made it to bed.  Sunday we didn't have much planned so we headed to a precious stones store in the town, but then just hung around the hostel for the rest of the day.  Our flight was in the evening so we got back to Buenos Aires around 8 ish, and I was back in my apartment by 9. Overall, it has to be one of my favorite weekends of the trip. If you ever have the opportunity to go, I absolutely recommend it! It's one of the NEW 7 Wonders of the World! 

So yeah, I'm not going to let the absolute let down of being robbed of something as valuable as my laptop get me down. I've accepted the fact that it's gone and I've done everything in my power to keep myself secure, like changing passwords and wiping the computer itself with find my iphone.  Things like this happen, and I literally have less than three weeks here. A little lack of computer never hurt anyone.... 

As always, I can't wait to see everyone! Until next time... 

- Meagan 

We've Arrived!

What a crazy couple of days it has been.  We finally arrived in Buenos Aires after over 24 hours of travel-related madness. We had a really late flight out of JFK (11:05 PM!!) and I expected that I would get a little sleep on the 8 hour flight considering it was overnight... I was wrong.  I swear I've never been on a flight where so many weird things happened.  Some of the best included: 1. A middle-aged gentleman in front of me watching the Justin Bieber movie in Portugese.  2. A screaming baby for a few hours. And finally, 3. An elderly man collapsing in the aisle right next to my face and needing complete assistance and medical attention to help.  (By the way, that last one happened in COMPLETE silence so all the people who were asleep missed it.)

We arrived in Lima, Peru around 5 AM their time, and we had a 7+ hour layover from hell.  We all pretty much passed out in the terminal on the chairs and periodically checked to see if our flight had a gate yet.  As we all woke up, we passed some time by reading Cosmo out loud and finding food.  Sorry, I'm not sorry, but I had a chicken caesar wrap at 7:30 in the morning.  I've never been so bored waiting for something to happen.  A few of us decided around 10:30 that we would go to the little restaurant near the gate and have some empanadas to get a little food in our system.  However, the chicken empanada I ordered was also filled with olives, raisins, and god only knows what else... I guess I'll stick to the seriously delicious empanadas here in Buenos Aires. Once we boarded our second flight to Buenos Aires, I pretty much immediately passed out, but I did get to catch all but the last 20 minutes of the Hunger Games before we landed.  LAN Airlines has EXCELLENT choice in movies and television.

Once we danced our way through security and customs and got all of our bags, we met our director, Alfredo, where he had a van waiting for us.  Alfredo is possibly one of the nicest guys I've ever met and I have a feeling this group will have a lot of fun with him. It took pretty much forever to get to the Universidad de Belgrano because of traffic, but when we got there all of our host mothers were waiting on the sidewalk with hugs and kisses.  My roommate Jenn and I took a taxi with our host mom to our apartment, where we were pleasantly surprised to find we each had our own room. It's small, but it absolutely gets the job done!

My room!

Our host mother made us a pretty big dinner, but by the time we were done eating we were ready to pass out.  The next morning we had some orientation with Alfredo, and then it was off to the Exposición Rural. Basically it was a giant agricultural expo with animals and foods and anything you could imagine. But before I get to that, I'd like to make a comment on the sidewalks.  I don't know what crazy person is in charge of them here, but there has to be 500 different kinds of sidewalks... and none of them are good.  They're either made of tile and complete uneven, or they were paved but people or dogs stepped in them when they were wet.  I can now see why they told us not to bring high heels...

But back to the expo. There were real life gauchos dressed in traditional attire and we got to interact with them, which was awesome.  We also met two other students from California who are on our trip, and we all meshed as a group really well.  We got to try lots of different foods and drinks and it was all around an awesome day.  

Los gauchos

We tried a lot of food... and it was all delicious!

We ended up at the fanciest McDonalds I've ever been in my life for some coffee and snacks before heading off to a ridiculous all you can eat buffet dinner with a fresh pasta station.  The food here is excellent, and I really can't speak any more highly of it.  On a funny note related to the McDonalds, we also discovered that my cell phone given to me by my program has a "sexy" mode... We're all kind of afraid to find out what it does. 

My motorola piece of crap is bringing sexy back. 

After dinner last night we went out to just chill and have a beer to celebrate Gita's birthday! Today is her actual birthday so we're going to go out to celebrate some more, Argentine Style.  It'll be an adventure but so much fun! Other than that, we had orientation today with all of the International students at the university, which included taking our spanish placement test.  We'll meet with our advisors this week and then finally start our classes next monday.  I'm really looking forward to exploring the city some more and finally learning how to use public transportation.  My spoiled upbringing has made me completely oblivious as to how to take a bus.  Better start learning...

It's going to be an interesting week... ¡hasta luego!

- Meagan