Night Life

Sorry it has been a bit since I have last updated! On Thursday I had to go to La Universidad again for an information session about the classes I’m taking and some other general stuff. After that, I had to wait about 2 hours for the testing session (written) to determine my Spanish level. When I finally took the test, we had pages of verb forms and word usage and at the end we had to describe a comic strip. It was about a judge and a courtroom (both words I did not know) so I resorted to using “el judge” and “el court” which is VERY wrong. Oh well. After that, we had to wait another hour before they were ready to begin the oral testing. This consisted of 2 students going into a room at a time and speaking with 2 women for 10 minutes. This isn’t a very long time, but when there are 30-40 other students waiting, and no list to know when you are going (so you can’t leave and come back), it took FOREVER. I waited in a cold (no heat) hallway, sitting on a marble floor (no chairs) for THREE HOURS…and of course I didn’t bring my laptop so I couldn’t check email or anything. One thing that was good was I was able to talk to the other students some more.

After, I returned to my house and Chelsea (the student who lived in my room last semester) came. She is staying with us for a few days because she just traveled South America for 3 weeks and her plane leaves on Monday. She is from Two Rivers and goes to the University of Eau Claire so that is pretty cool! It’s nice having another girl in the house, and she has a lot of interesting stories about her travels!

We all ate dinner and some of my friends called and said we were going dancing. Now, in Uruguay (and much of Latin America) people start hanging out around 11:00 pm and then leave for the bars and dance clubs around 2ish…and get home around 6-7 am. Needless to say, it was going to be a long night!! After dinner, I got a cab to Rachel (from EC) and Kate’s house. The cab driver got a little lost so that was kind of funny. The house that Rachel and Kate live at is very famous for exchange students—they have around 4-5 a semester!! Right now, its Rachel, Kate and Ana (a girl from Poland), and I’m not sure who else will be living there. It is a gorgeous house!!! A bunch of students from the past semester are still here (some had lived in the house) so they were all there along with some of their Uruguayan friends. Some other kids from this semester’s program came too, so it was a really cool combination of accents (French, German, Polish, Chilean, North American and Uruguayan Spanish all mixed!). We all hung out and around 2 we called cabs and went to a dance club—it was so much fun and the Uruguayans taught us a bunch of dances (none of which I was good at!). The Uruguayan accent is extremely heavy and very difficult to understand compared to the Spanish I've heard in Wisconsin so I spent most of the night asking my acquaintances to repeat themselves—luckily they were very patient and thought my accent was “preciosa” (cute)…great. After awhile we got cabs (they are very safe and relatively cheap here) and headed home (I was drenched because we were in an outside tent and it was raining…the ground was a huge puddle!). I finally got some dry clothes on and when I got into bed the time was 6:30 am…TIRED!!!

I slept til 1:30 the next afternoon, had breakfast & showered and went back to sleep until around 6 when I woke up for “lunch”… haha. After, I took a bus to the shopping center (I needed some everyday shoes) which was actually quite the chore because it is POURING here. It has been raining all day, and has definitely not let up. When I got to the mall, my hair was dripping wet and my shoes were soaking!! When I got home, Silvia told me that buses aren’t even running in parts of the city because the roads are flooded…crazy. Last night, I stayed in because of the rain…and because us North Americans need to get used to the night life here…I gotta get more sleep!! I woke up around 10:30 this morning---got 12 hours of sleep!! And now I’m just chillin in my front lawn using the internet before it starts raining again!

Peaceee