"Hi, My Name is Washington, not D.C., but Washington."

Monday morning I woke up early to walk the twenty-five odd blocks to the ... I don't know what it's called. Port? Port. where we were meeting at 7:45 in order to travel via some sort of ferry thing to Colonia, Urugay. The trip is only 50 minutes or so - in lit class we read a short story by Matilde Sánchez that dealt with stereotypes and the like between Argentina and Uruguay, and it was pretty funny to see those coming true. Case in point: our guide's name was Washington. I guess they had more English immigration or something, but apparently that's a really common Uruguayan name. Ridiculous.

So Washington showed us around a bit. The city's protected under a UNESCO something or another, I guess it's the only such site in Uruguay? And since it's near water, I guess there was a lot of Spanish-Portuguese rivalry over who got to take control of it, which is pretty neat because you can see that in the buildings and such.

Anyway, it was a really pretty town. The whole group went to a restaurant to lunch, and there was a live trio playing there (guitar, guitar, percussive-box-thing) that was very, very good. The entire place had such a nice clean calm feel to it. After lunch we wandered a bit more, and then just sort of sat by the beach. It was all very pleasant. I enjoyed it thoroughly. We returned to Buenos Aires in the evening, at which point I embarked on my literature essay. Which I finished at 3:30 in the morning (yikes).

Here are some pictures from the trip:

Just a street, but they were all really cute.

For some reason there was like, a paleontological site there or something? I'm not entirely positive. It was strange.

The cathedral.

Inside the cathedral - stones in the upper-left are Portugese, lower-right are Spanish. Or maybe the reverse, I don't remember. Still, it was funny that they conserved that. Other distinguishing architectural factors: Spanish buildings had flat roofs; Portugese ones had pointy ones and were made of stone and generally painted pink or blue. I think. I could be mixing all of this up entirely, but I doubt anyone in my audience is super knowledgeable about this stuff anyway.

 

The coast!

Me + a my-sized palm tree.

The inside of the "ferry." Yeah. It was ridiculous. I think all of us wondered if we were on the right thing. They had like, a bar, and a duty-free shop, and all sorts of strangely luxurious characteristics.

Special bonus picture, involving a super cool painting on the wall of the restaurant that nobody else seemed to derive quite as much enjoyment from:

Anyway, so that's that. Yesterday was great.

Today: Class, Class, Lunch, Class, Coffee, Revise Essays, Blog, Dinner, Blog, Sleep.

After literature I was chastising Chris for his biased reading/interpretation of the story we were discussing, and Diego called me polemical. Definition: "of, relating to, or involving strongly critical, controversial, or disputatious writing or speech," but I only looked that up after the fact. I asked him what it meant, and he tried to explain this, being like "no, no, it's a good thing." Then Max walked in and was like, who's polemical? And Diego was like, who do you think, and they both were just sort of like, oh, Shruti. So, apparently I'm polemical, in case any of you ever find yourselves in dire need of an adjective to describe me. It kind of reminds me of a disease...

"Oh no, I think I've gots me the polemia!"

"Is it contagious? Should we set up a colony of some sort? I hope you don't lose any digits!"

"Poor polemic's going to die any day now."

But yeah. I finished finished finished my literature and castellano essays, both of which were really quite fun to write. I dread dread dread starting the history one, though.

Tomorrow: Class, Class, Lunch, Class, MALBA (which is free on Wednesdays), and then History Essay (I'm so so so terrified of starting this, seriously).

Right now: SLEEP! I'm so excited!

P.S. - I remember what I did on Saturday and Sunday, too! I spent Saturday hopping from café to café, reading the two stories for this week and the one for Friday that I hadn't had time to finish, all of which I enjoyed thoroughly. "Algunas cosas importantes para mi generación" by Martín Rejtman is hilarious and wonderful. Sunday I spent at home writing the essay for Spanish and planning the essay for Literature.

Also, random thought: I love the café down the street from me. So no, it doesn't have WiFi, but it has delicious peach jelly and also was playing The Final Countdown on the stereo, which was ridiculous and amazing. I am craving some Arrested Development.