Wrapping things up?

After signing in to write this blog entry I could not believe that it had been more than two months since my last post and that I was titling this post "wrapping things up!" Since my Patagonian adventures and my sister's visit, I spent the month of May finding a rhythm of life for myself in Mendoza. Being the Type-A, planner-loving person that I am, I have struggled to adjust to some of the quirks of Mendocine life, for example:

- Buses are 100% unpredictable. You can wait from a range of 1 minute-30 minutes for a bus, and there is no set schedule that anybody knows.
- Like our program director told us on our first day, "time is not money in Mendoza." This phrase shines through in numerous, comical ways throughout my day. At the gym I joined, I am not allowed to turn on the treadmill, bike or any machine by myself; I have to go to the front desk and wait for the receptionist to signal to the "trainer" to come press the power button on my machine. (After two weeks of attempting to follow their method, I gave up and started just turning the machines on on my own, but I still can't tell if his daily "jokes" at me doing my own thing are subtle hints that I really need to start obeying the "gym rules.")
- Class at the University NEVER starts on time; we only have class about 70% of the scheduled class days, and it is not uncommon for me to think we have class, go to class, and find out that either the teachers are on strike, the teacher's aren't giving class because the students have other exams that week, or everyone is mysteriously attending some conference that I wasn't aware of!

But, I have definitely begun to notice that these things no longer annoy me half as much as they used to, and I now mostly just find them humorous. Although I felt slightly antsy at times during the month of May, looking back, I am glad I decided to stay in Mendoza every weekend and not travel, because it gave me time to be committed to the things that I was a part of here. I sang in a wedding with my choir and had my first choir concert which both went really well. The only slight downside was the curtain-like red dresses we had to wear as a uniform!


Jon came to visit from Buenos Aires for the weekend and I enjoyed showing him around Mendoza and re-visiting one of my favorite vineyards, bodega NORTON, in which they let you taste wine in each stage of the aging process so you can distinguish the differences in taste. Although I now know all of the official wine smelling and tasting tricks, my friends and I often joke here as we try to identify the smells and tastes that the back of the bottle says we are supposed to perceive. I've basically learned that no matter what the bottle, if I guess oak, red fruits and vanilla, I'll be sure to get at least one right!

I have spent the past two weekends traveling, first to Chile where I spent about 2 days in Santiago and two days in Valparaiso. In Santiago I was lucky enough to be able to meet up with Erin Becker, a TarHeel from Iowa doing a research project, Shepard Daniels, a Carolina grad on a Rotary Scholarship, and Grace Van Voorhis, a fellow West High grad studying abroad in Santiago! I've been so lucky to be able to visit and be visited by so many wonderful people even though I'm so far from home! Despite the pretty intense smog, I enjoyed the cafe-culture and European feel of Santiago, and most especially enjoyed the time-efficient and reliable transportation system! I then headed to Valparaiso, known as Chile's "cultural capital," and really fell in love with it even though I was only there for a few days. The port-city is built upon a number of hills, so the houses are all stacked on top of one another, and there are 'accensores,' or escalators scattered throughout the city that people take to get up to a certain level from which they then walk to their houses. All of the streets are curved and criss-crossed around, so it made it a very fun place to just walk around. I was also able to meet up with another Carolina friend, Raley White, who is studying in Vina del Mar, Valparaiso's neighboring city. Aside from my time spent in Chile, the drive from Mendoza to Chile was exquisitely beautiful! I was able to watch the sun setting over the Andes mountains and be reminded that I am currently in the Andean region (something that is surprisingly easy to forget from daily life in Mendoza). I took the picture on the right through the bus window on the way out of Mendoza.

Last weekend I traveled with Sally, Alli and Caitlyn to Cordoba and La Cumbre (a small, quaint outskirt town). We did a lot of walking, exploring, a little bit of hiking and ended the weekend off with a 'cuatriciclo' (four-wheeling) adventure.

I am now back in Mendoza and have less than three weeks left here! This week and next week are going to fly by due to final papers and exams, and then I have one more week to prepare for my final in my university class, and my time is pretty much over! Now that my time is almsot up I feel like I have so many things I still want to do here, but I guess life always seems to work that way. It will be strange to leave South America after spending all of 2009 here so far, but I am also looking forward to traveling to England with my family to visit relatives in the end of July and then heading back to Carolina in August!