nd up to the snow covered Mount Tronador, even offering to rent the car to transport us. Now, I don't know if you are familiar with the Ford Fiesta, but it's a party of a car. With a ground clearance of 0.5 mm, driving over lengthy national park dirt roads is a breeze. It sounded like we were dragging the tin man away from Oz.From the land of chocolate and ice cream (most heladerias serve approximately twelve varieties of chocolate ice cream), we chose our mode of transport (some taking an overnight bus and others, for some unknown reason, flying) and met in BA. Here, we planned our grand celebration for a certain event which took place on January 20. While we had planned a embassy gala crashing, we ended up watching and cheersing in the hotel room. I had an old Vote Obama temporary tattoo, which naturally I pasted to my face. Upon leaving our hostel, a man grabbed hold of me, asking if I was ok and why my abusive novio (boyfriend) was punching me in the face. This seemed to be the general consensus of most passerbys, although some thought it was simply a permanent tattoo of a black man on my face.
For my final week, Maggie and I sadly separated ways, as she headed to Cordoba and I traveled towards Santiago via Mendoza. It was a rough departure, and I acted like an irritating couple by continuing to respond to everyone in the we-nosotros form. They thought I was a crazy. As soon as I arrived in the wine capital of Argentina, I signed up for some sort of wine-bicycling tour. Around 10:30 am, we met someone who would drive us out into the country, where we would find our bikes and the bodegas. This person let us know that an extremely drunk drunkard was in the car, just a warning, so hop in! We assumed that this character was passed out on the street or some such thing and they were taking him back to his hostel. But he journeyed to the bike shop with us and before we knew it, was swerving on a bike and pouring large glasses of free wine for us all day. Everyone assumed that this character asking obnoxious and unclear questions (to pretty wine tour lady: now if we were to go on a date, which varietal of wine would be ideal?), was our friend from
forever. It was fairly embarrassing. Now my main question is: How is it possible to be extremely drunk, but not passed out at 10:30 am?My final project in Latin America was to learn Spanish. So I decided to brush up by attended a few last days of language school in Santiago. On my first day, I was fairly evenly paired with a German, although I was a bit more advanced than he on certain grammatical structures. My teacher asked if I wanted to switch up to the next level with this adorable Korean, who had already lived in Chile for ten months, and would be studying here in University for the next five years. I always like a challenge, so I quickly agreed. Within a few minutes of my next class, my teacher was asking me to politely fill in the blank. If I had had more money, I __________????? Right. The correct answer in this case was the past pluperfect of the subjunctive. I had studied the subjunctive for one day, past subjunctive for five minutes and compound forms for ten minutes, of course never placing all of these together at once. It was a bit rough, but I am so ready to have hypothetical conversations about my illustrious past with the DC latinos. As a side note, walking home from school everyday, I passed my favorite location in Santiago. The JFK beauty school. Thank goodness that Kennedy made that commitment to improve beauty programs in developing countries. His legacy will live forever.
My journey is over. I am writing this from an Apple computer in Greenwich, CT. I have moved to DC and experienced culture shock in a few forms. First of all, whenever I hear an American accent (these days, fairly regularly), I immediately want to turn and ask 'Oh wow, are you from the states? Whereabouts?' Also, I can read whatever new articles and books and listen to any new music that I want to. It's my choice. No exchanges involved. Finally, I hear Spanish everywhere. When I returned from Italy and while I studied French, I never heard anyone speak these fictional languages. I certainly appreciate that this is truly something I can use. I've seen so many amazing places and met fantastic people all in such a short time. It may be a rough transition to the working world (and by working, I mean unemployed).
