Mis Aventuras en Buenos Aires: October 2013

Colonia de Sacranento, Uruguay

I'm officially half way through my study abroad and have been in Argentina for 2 months! I can already feel I'm going to be completely torn when my end date arrives.

Friday October 18th CEA took us to Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay.

CEA strategically planned this excursion for the student's documentation purposes. See, I paid a $160 entrance fee to Argentina (which should last me about 2 years) to stay in this wonderful country for up to 90 days at a time. Since my program is longer than 90 days, this trip was planned to leave the country and then come back to comply with Argentine immigration laws. I've recently made it a goal of mine to go to every country in Latin America, so I was glad this trip was included to help me achieve that goal. (4 down, 17 more to go!)

Colonia is a quaint town right across from Buenos Aires. We took an hour long ferry (Buquebus) ride across Rio de la Plata. Colonia is one of the oldest towns in Uruguay at is famously known for it's historic quarter: "Barrio Histórico" that we spent the majority of our time in.

Colonia de Sacramento has had historic tug or rope rule between the Portuguese and the Spanish. It was originally discovered by the Portuguese, then taken by the Spanish, then taken back to the Portuguese, then again to the Spanish, and this tug of war goes on from 1680 until 1828. This flip flop of rule is evident in the architecture of the city, as half of the roads are Spanish-built and the other are Portuguese-built.

On this day was also Scott's 22nd birthday . Scott is one of my new friends I've made here during this trip. A Chicago native who is a senior Political Science/Philosophy major at Penn-State. One thing that particularly intrigues me about Scott is his genuine passion and unquenchable thirst to know and learn Latin American Culture. I had met Scott when he had only been in BsAs for 2 weeks and I was extremely impressed with his Spanish fluency. I love that whenever we aren't at school Scott is actively engaging with me in Spanish dialouge, and I have no doubt that Scott will see success in anything he pursues in life. Scott is 100% authentic, and that is just not something you come across by very often. I was blessed to be able to celebrate his 22nd with him.

Scott, Ariel, Maia, and I

I ate lunch with Ariel, Maia, and Scott. Our cultural guide, Nahuel made a joke in Missiones that we looked like a family with an adopted/love child (can you guess which is the one who doesn't match??) Scott ordered us a Urguacian wine named Tannat and he was surprised with a birthday cake courtesy of CEA.

After lunch we were granted 4 hours of free time to roam and explore Colonia. I'll admit I didn't really explore the city as much as I could have. Honestly once my toes made contact with the soft, warm sand I didn't want to leave the beach.

Scott, Logan, and I quickly went out in pursuit of finding the beach. I teased Scott because every wall he saw he wanted to concur (#rockclimbingjunkie). Nahuel ended up leading us to a small portion of beach and I immediately started thinking of ways in my head I could get out into the water. I didn't look up the weather that day and didn't know we would even be going to the beach so I didn't pack my swim suit for the trip.

Looking out into the rio I saw small archipelagos of "rock islands" and created my own path to explore and colonize on one of these rock islands that we ended up naming "Rock Island" (original, I know). I'm assuming Scott grew jealous of me being queen of my island as I laid and soaked up the sun that he found a way to join me. Soon after followed Logan and Maia. Not too far from Rock Island was another chunk of rocks that we concluded had to be concurred as well and populated quickly. The only problem was that we would have to swim out there to reach it and we forgot our swimsuits.

Scott and I exchanged a look and knew there was only one thing to do… swim out there. Maia, Logan, and even Eleanor joined our expedition. The girls and I stripped down to our sports bras and panties and swam out into the river. It was one of those "is my life really becoming a really cheesy movie" moments. Also one of my most fun moments of this entire trip.