Mendoza!!!

Hey all- SORRY its been so long since I have posted! When I used to have no friends I used to have lots of time to blog. When I used to go out all the time I had lots of crazy stories. Now I have some friends and I don't go out every night...so what have I been up to? I finally joined Megatlon, a gym. People don't really work out very hard at this said 'gym,' but its really nice and it is a haven for hot, young men who want to check out their 'muscles' in the mirrors, which is fine by me. I have been settling in more in the city, going to class and doing lots of reading in Spanish, exploring, shopping, eating, etc.
This past weekend I went to Mendoza! It was so nice to get out of the city. The trip stared on a Thursday night on the lovely Andesmar bus. The seats were actually more comfortable and more spacious than coach seats on an airplane. We bought Cerealitas (wheat thin like crackers that would become the staple of our diets while away) and started on our way. Our adorable 'host' on the bus started off with a nice friendly game of Bingo. It was great, we laughed the whole way through and everyone else laughed, too -- you can imagine 4 American girls "... WAIT WHAT WHAT 67 OR 77 OR 57????....REPEAT!!!" We got really into it, but in the end we lost. The "dinner" on the bus was THE most fowl thing I have ever tasted in my entire life. I went to sleep...
Woke up in the more glorious way anyone could ever wake up- to bLaStInG 80s MUSIC VIDEOS of course!!!! It was amazing - "Wake me up.before you go-go I don't wanna blah blah blah..." ..."Amadeus Amadeus.." lots of Whitney (Houston), Madonna, Bon Jovi, etc. Amazing. I knew it was going to be a great trip from then on.
We arrived in Mendoza and took a cab to our hostel, the Damajuana. It was really nice, my first time in a hostel!! People in the living room were watching the Olympics so we watched with them for a bit and then decided to explore a bit with Becca's friend Jessica's friend Adrian. Ohhh Adrian. Much more about him later.
We started out with a walk around a lovely park & lake, it was such a nice day and it was great to move around after the bus ride. Then we went to 2 bodegas (wineries)- the first one we went to was a lot bigger and newer, it was called Wienert. We tried some good Malbec and took a tour I didn't really understand, lol. We went to the next winery, which was a smaller boutique winery that Adrian's friend Francisco works at. Francisco will reappear in this blog later. I bought a bottle of Malbec that I drank last night with my host family (Birthday Post is next). After the last winery it was about 7 pm and we hadn't eaten all day. Needless to say we were absolutely starving and what better to cure hunger than pounds and pounds and pounds on empanadas. We ordered them by the dozen at this small bar and ate and ate and ate and tried to clean up our mess with wax paper napkins, which are very popular here in Argentina. I have no idea why anyone would ever elect to by wax paper napkins because in the end each person must use at least 50 to wipe one hand, so they must have to buy them so often. After Empanadas we went to rent ski and snowboard gear for our snowboarding trip 2 days later.
The gear we rented was fine, although the edges of my snowboard could have been sharper...But the snowsuits we rented..wow. Straight from the 80s- nylon shiny bright colored body suits that were so huge and wayyy to warm. The girls at the store told us that they were "de moda" aka in style, but I quickly learned as soon as I got onto the slopes that that people in Argentina do NO wear these ski suits. Everyone was decked out in North Face and Colombia while my friends and I were putting on a Tellytubby show for them. When we got back from renting we watched the Olympic soccer game Argentina vs. Nigeria (Argentina wins the gold!!!) in the bar connected to our hostel. It was fun, but we were soo tired and had to get up early for our Adventure Driving up the Andes.
We woke up at 9 am to go rent cars from Adrian's friend...at his house. This guy starts pulling out car after car after car from his garage! Of course they were all stick and no one knew hoe to drive them. On top of that and the fact that Adrian "didn't have a driver's license" and we had to put the cars under 2 of my friend's names, we decided NOT to rent the cars from the sketchy man's house. We instead got 2 taxis and paid them a flat rate for the day. We thought we were picking the good cab (Orly, Libby and I) but we actually got the one that broke down on the side of cliffs in the Andes every 15 minutes. It was an adventure. After a while we also got a flat tire, so we took a walk in the desert and used the natural bathroom and ran around. It was funny. We stopped at some really gorgeous places along the way, like El Balcón, which is a huuuuge ravine/canyon on the side of the mountain. We also stopped at an old hotel and church that is closed now, but open for weddings. We also saw the place where we get our bottled water. We drank it from the hose it comes out of...safe! We were planning on going to hot springs in the mountain, but since our car was perpetually over-heating, we couldn't do much. We headed home, until the car broke down for good and Francisco had to come pick us up. We fit 8 people in a two door tiny tiny Fiat- one person in the trunk.
Of course we just had to return to the empanada place, so we did. We had had such a long day and we had to prepare for skiing tomorrow bright and early, so we went home and went to bed.
Francisco picked me, Becca, Orly, and Seanna up at the hostel at 7 am and we were off to Los Penitentes, a small but really cute ski place about 1 hour west of Mendoza. We suffered through the embarrassment that was our ski outfits, and started off. I was on a snowboard and a lot of the "lifts" are those pully things, so that was not pretty. I mostly stuck to the 2 chair lifts. We had a great day, a fun lunch, good laughs, some face-plants, etc. It was really nice.
We headed home late and went back to the hostel. Our faces were soooo sun and wind burnt that for the next 5 days all of us were bright red with goggle tans. We were raccoons and then peeling crocodiles. It was awesome. Monday we had a relaxing day, we went to a great park and sat out in the sun with ice cream cones. Becca got massively shit on by a huge bird, but that was really the only low point of the trip. We had lots of homework to do, so we did that and then got back on the bus for home. We played Bingo Andesmar again, lost again, and watched Wild Hogs on the tv. We were again woken up by blasting 80s music. :)