Post- Buenos Aires post

I arrived in Viña del Mar from Buenos on Thursday. Since then, I have labeled just about everything in my room and bathroom with its spanish name, spent all afternoon toddling around Café con Letras, and had leche con plátanos for the first time. Ok, so it has not been an eventful four days, but they have been relaxing... and I believe I will be making leche con plátanos for the rest of my life. All you do is put a banana, a bunch of milk, and some sugar in a blender and voila! Try it!

I didn't take very many pictures in Buenos Aires. Five, to be exact. Why? I have come to realize that I have a love/hate relationship with pictures. I love to look at them and use them to spark memory, etc. but photos never quite do the scene justice. I enjoy the moment more if I am just focusing on the moment rather than the focus of my camera. I am kicking myself now for only taking so few pictures, though. Which brings me back to the hate... I do think that the moment is tainted if you have a lens in front of your eye.

Thus, I have a skim-on-pics blog. I will try to be better about this... but am making no guarantees.

Here is what I do have.

My new friend, Coren, and me in the center of town. We went to the Sunday market and saw all kinds of cool things. Who knew "the invisible man" really existed?

Here are Carlin and Coren in the kids section of the El Ateneo bookstore. :) Take a look here, it is quite a store!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ateneo

One of the other things we did in Buenos Aires was take a look around the Recoleta Cemetary. Samantha went

there. Her crew did do some picture taking. Check it out:

My current life-quandary (and I do realize that in a world of real-life problems, I am a lucky dog to have this be my biggest one) is learning Spanish. I am constantly wavering between feeling no pressure - only excitement to learn, and a feeling of total deluge... like I am never going to get to "fluency," why even try? I know that that is the wrong feeling to have, though. I am here for self-improvement. For myself. No one else. I am here to learn Spanish. In the best way I know of. I am definitely able. I am just having to take a deep breath from time to time, settle down... and make some more flashcards.

So this weekend, the ISA group is having an excursion to La Serena. It will go from Friday to Sunday and should be a lot of fun. We have a good group... it always tends to make for a pretty good time, and La Serena is supposed to be beautiful (just like everything else here). Annnnnndd Friday is my 21st Birthday! Ha, I have always had ideas about how my 21st would go down. I remember talking with my roommates when we were freshman about how all of us had our 21st birthday on weekend days. So I believe this will end up being a little bit of an unconventional American's 21st, but I have nothing to complain about!

P.S. I was inspired to make a post today by my roomie, Johanna. (This is your shout-out, Johanna.)