Note

Just a note to reiterate that I hate Ed students. And stupid first years. And also to say that stupid first-year Ed students have been filling my inbox with ridiculous worries about orientation. *grumble*

Squee!

Since Peter has not yet decided to put up a post here, I figured I might as well do so for the purpose of exclaiming my happiness at my new "toy": House Season 2 on DVD. ^_^ I have yet to watch it, but oh, I will. :-)

In other news, I'm home, as you may have guessed. Our new house, however, is not ready to be moved into. *sigh* October fifth is the current, somewhat tentative, possesion date. Yee. Oh, well. We went to look at it yesterday, and it's looking pretty nifty, despite lacking things like flooring and countertops and whatnot. I was hoping to get the moving done with before school started, but I guess that's just not going to happen.

Speaking of school, I have been out buying clothes that say "Respect my Authorita!" Apparently my friend Maura has been doing the same thing. See, we're both doing student teaching this year, and, while I'm certainly not early '90s grunge, I do own a pair of ripped jeans and other such clothing that would not be suitable to wear to an evaluation. I found a spiffy black twill blazer that's not too formal. And some grey pinstriped pants. I feel like giving out detentions all ready... ;-p

I stopped in at work today to give my manager my September availability (which is when I picked up my DVDs), and I was given (drumroll, please)... a nametag! I've only worked there for six months... ^_^ I guess they ordered a whole bunch, though, because Lindsay Coulter just got hers, as well, and she's worked there longer than I have.

That's about it, I guess. I've seen people since getting back, which has been fun. For all of you who are curious, the flight back (or, I should say, the four flights and one busride) was/were fine, for the most part. US customs is a bitch, especially after that scare recently, but I had cold medicine that allowed me to sleep, even if I was only allowed to bring one dose of it with me. Without water. *sigh* But I'm home now and caught up on sleep and back to eating food that actually contains fibre and nutrients and whatnot. ^_^ And now I'm going to go watch my House DVDs. :-)

*sings Teardrop*

...

It is Wednesday and I am going home tomorrow. I guess that means that there won´t really be anymore updates on the goings-on down here, since Peter doesn´t blog. Maybe I´ll give him my account password anyway, just in case he feels the urge. Which I doubt he will, but you never know... ^_^

Did I mention that I was sick? I don´t think I did. On Saturday I woke up with a sore throat, a sore back and the sniffles. The sniffles are the only thing left now, and my sinuses seem to be draining, but it seems that this little bug will stick around just long enough to make my flight home that much more annoying. Stupid not being allowed to take cold medicine...

Peter is off at one of the University buildings right now meeting with the woman he was put int contact with as a Uruguayan historian. He hopes that she´ll give him the names of some books he can get ahold of down here, as well as a clue as to where to start in his search for relevant primary sources. (Sidebar: The ´a´ key on this keybord is sticky. It is annoying. Or, as I originally typed, nnoying.) This meeting kicks off the nose-to-the-grindstone portion of his trip down here. While I´ve been down, it´s mostly been sightseeing, but now the poor boy actually has to get some work done. *mock pout* You know, for that Masters Degree and all...

We went back to the ¨tango bar¨ for dinner last night. They do good parilla, and we saw a small orchestral ensemble playing tango music. There were about 20 of them, around the age of 16, mostly string players with some Bb and bass clarinets, two oboes, a flute and a french horn. They played La Cumparsita. Or I think that´s how you spell it. Something about killing yourself for the evening. No, wait, that´s different...


Oh, hey, the Spanish word for ¨template¨ is ¨plantilla.¨ Speaking of vaguely confusing Spanish words, I tried to leave a comment on your blog, Angela, but everything was in Spanish and I kept getting error messages. Sorry. Also, I´m sorry if they actually worked and you got multiple comments from me. ^_^

Hey, look, that was the first paragraph of this post that didn´t end in an elypsis (sp?). Or an emoticon following an elypsis. Ok, so I´m bored. I guess I´ll go back to the hotel now where I´m not charged for use of the computer.

ETA: Kaitlyn, I haven´t heard back from my family yet. Family, get back to me. Oh, and Peter and I went to see the place where Artiogas´ remains are kept. It was scary. All dark with two guards at attention. Peter gave the very apt description of ¨An art deco distopia.¨ I couldn´t bring myself to go in. Peter went in a few steps and snapped a picture. Like I said, it was creepy...

Homecoming

For all you Edmonton folks: It is now official that I will be getting back into town Friday night. I´m pretty sure that I will need to sleep a great deal on Saturday, but, after that, I would love to see people. I would love it even more if you´d help me move boxes! ;-p

Figures

Oh, sure. *Now* we find a cafe with free wireless internet access. I *heart* using my own keyboard.

(Also, I am getting more and more excited about moving. And about the bookcase and chair I'm going to buy. :-))

Iguazu

Holy crap, this was an exhausting trip. It was really great, but we did So. Much. Here is a breakdown:

We left Montevideo at about 1pm on Monday after dragging our luggage over ten blocks (ouch). The trip took us about 21 hours, counting stopping for food and customs and whatnot, and we arrived at oiur Hotel in Brazil near the Iguazu National Park at about 10am. We chilled for a couple of hours (I slept), and then we headed out to this bird park. It was actually quite cool. I took a whole bunch of picutres. The highlight of the trip, for lack of a better term, though, was the parrot cage. There were parrots all over the park, but this was a kind of barn-shaped enclosure that you could walk into. All of the birds at the park were friendly, and Peter and I each allowed a parrot to use our arm as a perch (mine liked the buttons on my jean jacket). However, a parrot hanging from the roof of the cage pooped on me. Then we were dive-bombed several times. Seriously. I´m certain the parrots weren´t actually going for us, but they would bicker or something with eachother and then fly across the cage, really low. My poop-stained pants got even dirtier from diving into a crouching position over and over. Mind, now, that these are big birds. From their feet to the top of their heads is about 15 inches. There were smaller ones, too, but those ones were... less energetic.

After the bird park, we went to the Brazilian National Park at Iguazu falls. We took a walk and caught our first glimpse of the falls. Before we started on the walk, though, I bought another disposable camera at the giftshop, so I have pictures of this, too. The gift shop was really cool, and I was looking forward to buying people souvenirs, but, for some reason, this tourist junket did not involve shoppin at souvenir shops. There was other shopping, as I´ll mention later, but I was unable to get the cute lemurcoon shirt I wanted. I have no idea what these animals are actually called. The translation of the guide announcement on the park bus called them raccoons. They´re not raccoons in the Canadian sense. They are, however, ridculously cute. Their noses move so adorably! I got pictures of them, including one where a whole group of them just walked into our midst and flopped into a furpile. That was quite something. ^_^ But, yeah, I thought they looked more like lemurs, although I´m apparantly mistaken in that, because Peter says that a lemur is kind of like a monkey (I´ll go look that up once I´m finished here), but, by the time Peter told me this, they were all ready lemurcoons to me. ^_^

Edit: These things totally look like lemurs, but with longer noses. Peter says that lemurs look like something halfway between a lemurcoon and a monkey. I say that lemurcoons look halfway between between a lemur and a racoon. With slightly longer, remarkably flexible noses that looks insanely cute when they sniff at something. ^_^ Ok, now Peter says that lemurcoons is a good name for them. ^_^

That was it for that day. Most meals were buffets, either at the hotel or at some tourist trough. Luckily, we were doing enough walking for the unhealthy food not to matter one bit. The next day was insane for that. We got up at seven and were out the door at eight to go to the Argentine side of the falls. We bought garbage bag-esque rain ponchos before we left, as it was storming insanely outside, but no camera. I regretted this once I saw the Argentine side of the falls. It was gorgeous. It´s called what translates to ¨The throat of the devil,¨ and that´s quite an appropriate name. The Guarani native myth for the creation of the falls says that the river was angry that a warrior was escaping with a young virgin, so the riverbed dropped out from under them, and you can tell how one might get that impression. Luckily, though, it was around then that I became certain that there was in fact a guy filming us. We were able to buy a DVD with documentaries about the falls and other local attractions, plus a great deal of footage of us throughout the day. There´s a clip of me singing Happy Birthday in French to one of the women on our tour. People on the tour got the idea that I was primarily a French speaker, because, really, when I´m trying to understand Spanish, I compare it to French, and so, often, French is what comes out of my mouth when I reply. Oh, well. We got the documentary DVD in English, not French, so people back home will be able to understand it.

After the walk through the Argentine National Park, some of us went on a ¨safari.¨ This was a jeep ride through the rainforest with a woman talking about neat things around us. Holy crap, that forest was dense. And I now understand why rainforests are irreplaceable; the soil isn´t fertile--in fact, it´s all full of iron and really, really hard rock--but all the plants have shallow roots that draw nutrients from the fallen foliage of other plants, so the rainforest sustains itself because there are so many plants there. Other nifty facts include the one that deer there don´t have antlers because they prevent them from escaping their predators with all those plants hanging around. The vines were something else, too. Anyway, after the jeep ride, we went on a motorboat ride along the Iguzu river. We went as close to the falls as we safely could, which isn´t _that_ close, but still pretty nifty. And then the driver stunted a bit before we returned to shore. The water in the river was warm and only about 3 feet deep, and I got soaked. And since it was rainy a such, I stayed wet for teh rest of the day. It was worth it, though. The 3 feet deep water is something I forgot to mention. It´s one of the things that makes the falls so impressive. Right up until the waterfall, the river is lazy and wide and three feet deep. While I wouldn´t try my luck at walking through it, it looks perfectly calm. Then it falls a couple hundred feet.

After walking back up the stairs to the jeep that didn´t seem so long on the way down, we ate lunch and left the park. On our way out of Argentina (where I did in fact manage to buy a couple of shirts, including a baby-sized lemurcoon one) we stopped at what must be the biggest duty-free shop in the world. It had a car audio section. I was somewhat tempted to buy a cheap digital camera, but all we bought was Peanut M&Ms because we were hungry. And some Droste chocolate pastilles because there was a $10 minimum charge to use a credit card. After that, we returned to the hotel and I slept a bit before we had dinner and left for a show. It was supposed to be of traditional South American music and dancing. It started out with calling people from various countries onto the stage to sing fold songs from those countries, and Peter and I wound up on stage singing Alouette. Then came the scantily-clad women. There were three featured women wh0 each got to do a number featuring their ass, but the star of the show was something else. I mean, I don´t take this stuff the least bit seriously, but this woman had what I have no problem describing as insanely lng legs and a very pert ass. Interspersed were bits by tumblers and musicians and re-enactments of tribal rituals that involved a great many men in hoop skirts. I wound up being brought on stage again to dance with a bunch of other women from the audience. All in all, the show was kind of fun but mediocre, and it went nearly an hour longer than I thought it would. We left at half past midnight, and our wake-up call the next morning was at six.

The next day I could´ve done without. I was sooooo tired. We started out by going into Paraguay to see the Itaipu dam, which is apparantly the biggest or second biggest in the world. It wasn´t in use that day. I have a couple of pictures. Then we went into the ¨City in the East,¨ to shop. This place was what I imagine some less pleasant parts of Hong Kong to look like. The sidewalks were completely lined with hawker stands to the point where you could either walk through their booths or walk on the street. For some reason, the majority of these places sold underwear. And pirated DVDs. Peter and I went to a bank where we could get American currency, which was what worked more or less anywhere outside of Uruguay. I did wind up with some Argentine currency at one point, though, but I spent it on the 5 peso leaving Argentina tax. Down the street from where our bus stopped was a place called Mona Lisa. It was a ridiculously high-end shop. Except that it didn´t sell many clothes, it put Holt Renfrew to shame. We had coffee there because it was a less off-putting place to kill an hour. The coffee was actually reasonably cheap, too, unlike the rest of the stuff they sold. Eventually, though, we wound up back on the bus ignoring the kids who were trying to sell us stuff from outside the bus door. One hawker actually got on the bus with us and came back to Brazil. She was selling towels and dolls and a some shirts. I think somebody even bought something.

That evening there was a meeting for drinks in the hotel bar, but I slept insead. There was also another show, I think, but I never heard anything about it from anyone except Peter, and I slept through it, too. I was tired and rather cranky and did not want to go anywhere. The next morning, our wake up call came at 5:30, and though I wasn´t homicidal anymore, I certainly wasn´t well-rested. We ate breakfast and got on the bus. Around 11, we stopped at the Jesuit ruins in the Misiones province of Argentina. That rocked. Took lots of pictures. Then we got on the bus again and went to Wanda, where they mine all kinds of semi-precious stones. We didn´t tour the mines, but we did stop at a shop where I bought a couple of gifts for people. Did I mention I was sleeping whenever we were on the bus? Yeah, I totally was. Then, well, we drove to Montevideo. We got back around 8 this morning. Went to our new hotel and slept the morning away. It´s now coming up on six o´clock. This post is ridiculously long. And my left wrist is starting to hurt from begin bent in an odd direction because of the size of the desk at the internet cafe. I think I´m gonna stop writing now.

Oh, wait. One last thing: It was warm in Brazil! And Argentina! I was warm yesterday! Now, it´s actually quite nice in Montevideo at about 17 degrees, but it was warm on the tour. I was very happy. *sigh*

Additions and Amendments

Stuff that should have been in the previous post:

1. Several of the sidewalks in Montevideo are paved in square concrete tiles molded into nine little squares. This make me deliriously happy. Sometimes, though, the tiles are of four sqaures of nine. This upsets me and makes me not sure where to step.

2. I guess it depends on what you´d call a ¨block¨ and what day of the week it is and what the weather is like when you count how many street vendors there are. At least one per block at all times, though. 3-6 of them per block on a non-rainy weekday. As many as 10 on larger blocks.

3. The city of Montevideo is brought to you by Johnny Walker Whisky. Seriously. I mean, I´ve been told that Montevideo is more of a bar town than, say, Buenos Aires, but still. Johnny Walker runs this town, and it frightens me. When Peter and I were at that nice Italian restaurant a while ago, the first apertif they offered us was whisky. And then there are the places done in Johnny Walker decor...

Now onto a post about our trip to Iguazu.

More Verbosity

Today is a really nice day. You may not be able to tell it from inside this dark-ish cybercafe, but the sky is a brilliant blue and it´s maybe as warm as 16 degrees. Warm enough for me to only need my jean jacket, and not my flece hoodie and jean jacket.

I have realized that, despite describing what I´ve been doing, I have been describing little of the things that characterize this place. So here´s a list:

The candied peanut vendors on the street make the place smell oddly nice. They candy the peanuts in these little pots, and the process makes a lot of smoke, which is usually dispersed through a long pipe, maybe four inches wide and five feet tall. There are a whole bunch of these guys--one on every block, pretty much. The peanuts are yummy. :-)

There´s a Plaza every few blocks in the downtown area along Av 18 de Julio. They all have at least one statue and a bunch of trees. Some have a fountain. Peter and I sat in one just today that had a really pretty fountain with a statue depicting early independance fighters in the middle. The Plaza Independencia, which is the biggest we´ve come across, has a huge statue of Artigas in the middle, complete with his body underneath it. You can go view it between 9am and 5pm on Weekdays. We haven´t been yet, but I hope to.

There are about 5-10 street vendors per block, in addition to the peanut guys, and almost all of them sell socks. They also sell bags and magazines and cell phone cases and bombillas (more on those later) and lanyards and all kinds of trinkets. As far as I can tell, they´re not focused on tourists, since almost none of them are ¨barkers,¨ and it isn´t anywhere near tourist season. Striped socks in bright colours seem to be in fashion this year.

The government and private employers are working in synchronicity. A third group of people crowding the sidewalks is people who pass out little flyers and brochures to anyone who passes. The people who take them almost universally discard them with ten seconds, and rarely in a garbage can. At this point, the government-employed clean-up people come in and sweep them away. It´s a very simple, very effective sybiotic relationship that keeps people employed.

The palm trees look so very odd against the stone architecture and grey skies. One picture I want to take before I leave is one of the statue of Artigas, photographed at such an angle as to include a palm tree to the side and a domed tower like dozens I saw in Italy in the background, all against an overcast background. That is Montevideo in a nutshell, I´d say. Or, at least, downtown Montevideo.

There´s some really interesting graffitti around here. A surprising amount of it is stenciled. I saw a bit just today that was a stenciled sumo wrestler with Ronald McDonald´s head (also in stencil) painted over its head. I´ve also seen a few toasters with toast popping out of them. Of course, there´s plenty of political graffitti, too. Anarchy symbols here and there, messages about genocide and some general anti-Isreali sentiments. In the old city area, there´s been a bunch of stone walls painted with latex paint in bright primary colours. It seems that a political party or some other kind of well-organized group is responsible for them. They have positive messages written on them (though I can´t remember what they say), and they all feature the number 1001.

Oh, and there are guys with semi-automatic weapons outside some of the banks.

As for what Peter and I have been doing, the answer is panicking some, but not doing much else. We were up early yesterday morning (we had to buy an alarm clock first) so that we could get to the travel agent and pick up our ticket so that we could then get to the Brazillian Embassey to submit our Visa applications. Our Visas will be ready Monday at 11. We have to be at the bus station at 12:30. We already have our schedule for the morning settled.

Today we mostly wandered around, looking at stuff. We made hotel reservations at a different hotel for when we get back from Iguazu. This was the hotel we originally wanted to stay at, but the number Peter had was out of service. It´s a block away from where we´re staying now, but it looks a lot nicer, and it´s at more or less the same price point.

We also went and bought bombillas today. Those are the gourd things for the Yerba Mate tea. I couldn´t remember how to spell them last time. They were kind of pricey--almost $50 Canadian for the cup and the filter-straw. But they´re pretty and will make great souvenirs and we can drink tea out of them. :-)

I´m not sure if I´ll be able to update before we leave for Iguazu, but, thinking about it, I don´t think I will. I´m not sure what internet availability will be like over there, but, at the very least, I´ll be back in Montevideo a week from today (Saturday). Keep blogging--I want to hear what you guys are up, to, too. :-)

Frankfurteria

That´s on a sign that I can see through the window of the cybercafe that I´m in. It makes me laugh. There are also a whole bunch of pigeons right outside the window, not all of them obese. Unusual.

So Peter and I are going to Iguazu falls next week. We leave on Monday and it´s a 6-day trip. It cost around $200 US each, which, considering it includes transportation, hotel and two meals a day, is pretty good. The hotel looks really nice, too, which will be a welcome change from Hotel Arapey, which only heats its rooms at night, despite the rainy 10-degree weather. But, to be fair, it´s nicer today, maybe as warm as 15 degrees, and it´s only partly cloudy.

But, good lord, did we have a hard time getting this trip booked. We went to the travel agent yesterday and talked to a really helpful woman who spoke English (yay!), and we were given an itinerary and quoted a price and shown a hotel brochure and all kinds of good stuff. She said that she could book our tickets when we came back with a tourist visa from the Brazilian Embassy. It was closed by that point, so we went there this morning. The guy gave us a form to fill out and told us to come back. We went for breakfast (Cafe Central is a wonderful place) and filled out the forms. Mostly. We had to stop back at the travel agency to get the address and telephone number of the hotel, which was just fine. So then we go back to the Embassy, wait around for a while (I don´t know why the people who work there aren´t at the windows. They just seem to come out every 20 minutes or so to see if there´s anybody there that needs their help). We wind up talking to the same guy as before, and he asks us for picutres. We show him our passports, and he tells us that no, we need seperate pictures taken. He directs us to the AGFA shop on the corner of the block. We go down there and get pictures taken. Both Peter and I look horrible in the pictures, of course. Peter looks stoned and I look ghostly. I decided that we need to doodle on them and attatch them to the postcards we send to people. (Sidebar: We´ll be sending you postcards from Iguazu Falls, so next week.) Anyway, we go back to the Embassy again, and wait around for about 45 minutes. Yawn, etc. This time we talk to a different guy, and everything goes well until he asks us for our tickets.

What?!?!

We tell him that the travel agent told us that we needed the visa to get the tickets. He tells us no and gives us a list of thing that we need in order to get a visa. We leave again. I really wish that we´d been given that list along with the forms to fill out. But we head bravely back to the travel agent and explain things to her. The Embassy closes in half an hour by this point. She tells us that she can´t give us our not-quite-tickets-but-something-similiar until tomorrow. That´s all right, because that way we can still pick up our visas on Monday morning. (The travel agent said we´d get them the same day, usually, but the list the Embassy gave us said it takes two buisness days.) The travel agent then tells us that they currently can´t accept credit cards. She does tell us, however, that we can pay in either Uruguayan pesos or US dollars, and (thank God) that we don´t have to pay it all now, that we can pay the rest when we pick up our `tickets` tomorrow. So after paying half each, we´re finally finished. For today. We have to buy an alarm clock before tonight, though, so we can make sure to wake up in time to get to the Travel Agent at 10am so that we can get to the Embassy ASAP.

In other news, I had another disgusting Uruguayan classic for dinner last night. It´s called a Parilla, and it consists of various parts of a cow cooked up and served to you. There were piece of steak, churizo sausages, kidneys, blood sausage and something deep-fried that looked like KFC chicken fries. I wasn´t adventurous enough to try anything but the churizo and the steak, especially since the steak was rather disgusting. It was like it had been soaked in oil before cooking--I´d never tasted steak that fatty and greasy before. But I´m glad I was around to have been part of it. Now I can say that I´ve done it, and I´ll (hopefully) never have to do it again.

Hmmm... What else? Peter and I are going to be buying Yerba Mate (a kind of tea) and the... I forget what they´re called, but they´re the cups you drink it out of, kind of carved gourds, and they start with a B. Bambedas? Something like that. I don´t want to ask Peter for fear of people looking at me funny. The only problem with this plan is that we have no way of boiling water. Oh, well, though. I don´t particularly feel like buying a thermos (where you keep the water to refill the rather small cup), either, so I guess maybe we´ll just bring the stuff home and drink it here.

My iPod is still frtizy, despite successfully resetting it. My camera is still dead, but I have bought a disposable one. It has one picture on it so far, but I plan to take many more. The power converter my mom gave me is now working; we put an elastic band around the components to hold it together properly so the connection doesn´t cut in and out. This was not before we accidentally bought a cable for Itialian laptops in South America, though. Oh, well. It cost roughly $3.50 Canadian, so it´s not a horrible waste. And, no, we can´t return it. We tried.

And today we bought more goodness from a Patisserie a couple blocks down from our hotel. That place is straight out of Paris. So, Colbert, I may not have eaten something deep-fried and yummy, but I´ve definately eaten something unhealthy and yummy. :-) They have the `macaroon` things that Peter brought me back from France a couple of years ago. I´m pretty I made just about everybody I could try on of those. They don´t have as many flavours as the place in France, but they´re still soooo yummy.

Anyway, I´ve been very verbose today. I´ve caught up on everyone´s blogs except Angela´s and Jenilee´s. And Fiz´s, I guess. I haven´t even been to that one, yet. But I´m glad to hear how everyone´s doing. Jo, you made me totally want to go to Las Vegas! Maybe I can take the debt I wind up with after this trip and put it towards a weekend there. If only things actually worked that way... ;-)

Chilly, but Nifty

Hello, people! It is cold and very, very rainy here in Montevideo. My Spanish is improving somewhat. Check it out: Es muy frio en nuestra sala de hotel. We complained to the owner guy, but it doesn´t seem to have done much. We have to stay under the covers of the bed whenever we´re in teh room, and pause every 15 minutes or so to warm up our frozen hands. Muy frio. We`re gonna go check out another hotel today and ask if we can see a room to gague how warm it is, and then maybe switch on Friday, since that technically the end of our reservation at the place we´re at. Peter wisely put off book the entire three weeks at once in case we needed to change hotels.

We`re looking into taking a week-long trip to Iguazu falls on Monday. That would be nice. I´m just hoping that my suitcase that is of appropriate size for three weeks will also be okay to bring on the one-week bus trip.

Things are much more lively here on weekdays. The first day we really went out exploring was Saturday, when very little was open, and then even less was open on Sunday. Of course, today and Monday it has been raining cats and dogs, so we haven´t been able to spend as much time ourside as we would like. We did go down to the old city and both coasts on Sunday, though. Very pretty. Well, not the port, really, but the old city was. We went to the Canadian Embassey and wrote our names in the big book, telling them who we are, where we´re staying and how long we´ll be here. And where we´re from, too, I guess.

I am so glad that I don`t have to drive down here. Busses and taxi have the run of the road, and they`re angry things. The buesses are angry huge things, and the taxis are angry little things, but you really don´t want to get in the way of either. Next on the totem pole is pedestrians. Traffic lights mean nothing to people here. Then, lastly, are regular cars. They´re small and cute and named things like Wind and Saxo, but they have no authority on the road.

We`re staying right in downtown Montevideo, quite close to the main drag, Ave 18 nde Julio. Apparantly there was a treaty (sp?) signed on July 18th, 1830. *shrugs* There`s a little plaque on one of the buildings explaining it.

The power converter my mom gave me doesn´t seem to want to work much. It kind of fritzes little bursts of electricity, but something´s not connecting properly. So we´re off to the electronics store in a bit to get another one.

Hmm, let´s see, what else to say...? Oh, mom, if you´re reading this, I sent you an e-mail, but I´m not sure that it went through, because the confirmation page wouldn´t load. It basically said to give Farley a tummy rub for me.

I think I´ll leave it at that for now. I´m trying to keep up with people´s blogs, but there are rather more entries than I expected. MorPRi, I´m looking at you. ;-p I´ll be stopping by an internet cafe every few days, though, providing I can find one. There´s a story and a great deal of walking behind that.

Oh, wait! I know what I was going to say! We stumbled across this insanely good Itialian restaurant last night. It was $70 for the two of us, all told, but that was with appetizer, mains, desserts, coffee and a drink. Peter was delighted. I was wishing I hadn´t been snacking on rice cakes that afternoon. And, the night before, I accidentally order a classic Uruguyan heart attack on a plate. Well, rather, I had almost no idea what I was ordering, except that it had chicken. It´s meat, usually a thin cut of steak or chicken, covered in cheese, then topped with an egg, served either on a bed of fries or on a bun. If you have the bun, the egg is hard-boiled, which is what I got, or, if it´s on fries, the egg is fried, which is what Peter got, but he requested no egg, because he´s Peter. It was basically all there was to order at this place we were at, becuse it was just after 7, but they didn´t start offering their whole menu untl 8pm. That´s when we realized that we might want to start going for dinner a little later. And learn how to get the cheque. You have to forcefully ask for it, otherwise people will just leave you to chat or whatever. *sigh*

Anyway, I should stop writing, because this internet session is going to cost me a whole $0.75 soon. *g*

In Short, In Brief

We´re in Montevideo
Our hotel room is cold.
We found a good internet cafe and a good cafe-cafe.
The main flight attendant on our flight from Dallas to Buenos Aires sounded like the guy from family guy with the soft gay voice. Not the old guy, the other one. It was a highlight. ^_^
The Dallas airport is freakin´huge.
When I finish this post, I´m gonna go try to catch up on other people´s blogs.
The power converter my mom gave me only allows two-pronged plugs. My computer charger is three-pronged. I´m gonna have to go find a two-to-three interim plug.
My iPod has come back to life in fits and spurts, and I´m going to try to reformat it once I can charge my computer.
My camera, however, seems to be dead. Maybe the battery didn´t charge fully at Kaitlyn´s or something, but it´s currently doing nothing.
We haven´t really gotten a chance to do much, as this is our first day that doesn´t involve catching up on sleep. More exciting posts are to come.

ETA: This keyboard is just slightly different from the ones I´m used to. It is annoying.