Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my Dad´s 50th birthday, so Happy Birthday Dad when you read this. Him and my brother are on their way to Las Vegas right now. So good luck to them.

So I had planned to travel this past weekend, but decided I wanted to save money to travel when it gets warmer. I actually found a trip through the University of Belgrano through a girl in one of my classes to Bariloche in Patagonia. Patagonia is in the southern part of Argentina and is very beautiful and mountainous. My university here offers a roundtrip bus ticket, three nights in a hostel, breakfast and dinner, and two lift ticket for $1045 pesos (about 300 USD). So I decided it could be a really fun trip, which is in two weeks. I am thinking about going on a day trip this weekend to Montevideo, Uruguay which is about four hours on a boat and then a ferry over I think it is the Atlantic. Montevideo is a very old and supposedly very beautiful city. However, this week is Fashion Week in BA and I might stay here to see one of the FREE fashion shows. Free is very hard to find here in the city. This past weekend was pretty relaxing. On Thursday I made a new Argentine friend named Franco. My roommate Liz and friend Jared went to his apartment to hang out with some of his friends on Thursday and Friday night and then went out to a club. Franco works for a club called Lost in BA. He basically gets paid a lot of many to take friends or people he meets out to the club and show them a good time. We got to meet some of his friends who were very nice, and it was a great way to practice Spanish. Most of them can speak English very well but I convinced them to practice Spanish with me. On Saturday, I went to another feria in Plaza Serrano which has a bunch of small resturants, bars, and shops in a neighborhood called Palermo. On the weekends a bunch of local designers go there to sell their clothing. There was a lot of really neat things. I bought a really nice leather wallet for 30 pesos (10 USD). I then had lunch with my Argentine friend Brenda, one of my friends Jessica, Jared, and Liz. Saturday night I decided to take it easy, go to dinner, and went to bed semi early. On Sunday Jared, Liz, and I went to the Planetarium. We paid 4 pesos (1 USD) for what we thought was going to be some sort of a show. It ended up being a walk through tour of what looked like someones science fair project. Liz got nauseous and had to leave. Jared and I were pretty entertained by it. We could understand the woman who lead the tour pretty well in Spanish. At the end of the tour she led us through what was supposed to be an imitation of walking through space. We basically walked on a cushiony floor with these mirror goggles on our heads. It was pretty funny. Sunday night was Brenda´s birthday. We went to a bar with all of her friends and danced. It was really fun. The bar played some really good music: some American but mainly reggaton and salsa type music. We didnt home until around 6:30 am. Because yesterday was a holiday (the death of San Martin, one of the leaders in the war for Argentina´s independence I think) we didnt have class. I went to lunch with Brenda for her official birthday. I had my first Caesar salad since I have been here! Surprisingly it is hard to find a salad with lettuce here. The menu has to say with lechuga (lettuce) for the salad to have lettuce. It was good had some sort of Ranch dressing, so it was different but I liked it. I have also been forgetting to mention that I met someone else in my program in who is in SIFE. For those who do not know, Students in Free Enterprise is the business organization that I am very involved in at Cofc. My friend Nate goes to Graceland College in Iowa, and they have a really good SIFE team. They placed at the National SIFE competition in May that I went to I believe. We have been talking about doing a project at the University of Belgrano. I talked to some of the program directors through ISA here and they told me talk to some of the business classes at my school. I plan to do that within the next month. Also, Brenda studies at a business school in downtown BA. She said she may be able to help with starting a project there as well. There is a business fair in September that I may be able to go to. I´ll keep everyone posted with what happens next. Last night I had planned to go out but fell asleep with my light on. Today I have my Tango class and tutoring pretty soon!.Chau besos (kisses:its a common way to say goodbye here)to everyone!