nadie sabe adonde va

so i've been in the states for thirteen days. my luggage arrived a day late, but that's nothing compared to the original five day wait. and it DID get stuck in lima again on the way back...go figure. i think i might hate peru forever, haha.

it's bizarre to be in the states again, i'm not sure i like it. i definitely miss speaking spanish...it's hard to not just break into spanish occasionally. and i miss the way that school and hanging out with friends worked in uruguay. i'm sure part of that is due to the fact that i was there in a study-abroad situation, minus responsibilities and obligations, but regardless of that i do miss it.

i think that maybe when i move back to school and get started on classes things will be a little less weird. right now everything seems like it's in-between, a weird waiting period, and i have no routine to make it more normal. here's to hoping for the best...

the day of reckoning has arrived.

i leave for the airport in a little while and then i leave mdeo for good. maybe not for good forever, i might come back. but i'll never live in carlos maria maeso 2772 again, nor will i be here with these people again. it's extremely depressing. i have the most disgusting queasy feeling in my stomach - i'm not ready to leave. still. i'm sure once i get back in the states, i'll be happy i'm home, but for now i have no interest whatsoever in returning to the states. i thought for sure by now i would've gotten excited about going back.

geez this sucks.

not to mention i don't actually make it back in the states until tuesday, and mississippi until tuesday afternoon or night, so i've got a good 24 hours of travel ahead of me, in addition to the certainty of my baggage getting stuck in lima again. i'm biased against peru for life for their handling of my luggage, i think.

as only intercambios without obligations and responsibilities can do, we always have a lot of parties and go out a lot. but now that we're hemorrhaging people, we've been getting together way more than usual. which is great! cause i want as much time as i can with the whole (of what's left) group.

yesterday we went to a tenedor libre pizzeria, which is all-you-can-eat (literally translated it's free fork, free as in freedom and not as in price), and is great. the tenedor libre pizza only costs 84 pesos, which is $4.20 in american money, and then we got a 2 liter of coke to share among four people for 76 pesos ($3.80 american) so in tota i paid about $5 to stuff myself silly. instead of doing the usual buffet, they first bring you a half portion of pizza (which is just crust and sauce), a half portion of muzzarella (which is what we refer to as pizza in the states), and a portion of faina (which is like a fried thick moist cornbready type thing that you eat on top of the pizza that doesn't have cheese). then after that you can order whatever toppings you want and they bring you a portion at a time. they had probably 25 gustos to choose from, so we went all out. i ate probably one and a half individual portions, so did marcia (uruguay) and carlos (puerto rico), and matias (argentina) did us all proud by downing a good four or five portions. somebody's got to take advantage of the deal, haha. but in reality it's a great deal, normally an individual portion of muzzarella with a topping costs anywhere from 70 to 120 pesos depending on where you go. so 84 pesos is nothing, not to mention their sauce and crust were fantastic.

after that we headed over to the apartment of a uruguayan named mariu (short for maria eugenia), where we met up with simon, edilia (mexico both), rosana (sweden/uruguay), lukas (germany), and four uruguayans. much guitar, singing, screaming, and dropping of spanish syllables ensued:

this is simon, who later broke a chair while sitting in it and many hilarious photos were taken...unfortunately i can't find any of them right now.

this is matias and my foot. i don't really have anything else to say about it, i guess.

matias, me, rosana, and dardo. it was burning up in that apartment, and i think stuffing the four of us on the same couch wasn't exactly helping the temperature.

carlos and guitar - this man can play folklorico puertorriqueno like a mad man. it's fantastic to listen to it, very good at classic guitar.

marcia, matias and me. still on that stupid couch.

carlos, mariu, simon, and marcia. before breaking the chair, but pretty close to it, haha.

carlitos and lukas. i think i have yet to see a picture of lukas where he's not trying to talk or making a face. apparently smiling is a diffcult thing.

this series of pictures is from the taste test of some sort of colombian liquor that mariu had brought back from bogota. it tasted like licorice...needless to say i was not impressed. i really hate licorice. and the burn of liquor does NOT make it any better, obviously.

more guitar-ing.

 

rosana and i got bored and french braided matias' hair. we also did pigtails and took pictures of it but i can't find those either...all the best pictures are hiding!

 

so yeah. clearly, sin responsabilidad.

well my time is winding down...i leave uruguay on monday, the 14th, and get back to the states on the 15th. everyone is trickling out of uruguay little by little, and it's a werd time for all of us. everytime we get together, it's a goodbye for two, five, maybe just one person. i would say that there's only about 1/3 of us left now. i feel kind of in a state of stasis - i'm not really in uruguay anymore, but i'm not in the states either. i'm not really doing anything with myself either, i'm just waiting to leave but i'm not ready to go yet. it is bizarre.

i still have one more present to buy, although i did the majority of my shopping early cause i knew if i put it off i wouldn't do it. and i have to buy a mate for myself to prove that i was in uruguay and not in argentina or chile, haha. if i didn't have a mate i would never be able to say i really went to uruguay, and i'd like to be able to claim my pais de residencia, thanks.

i don't even want to THINK about packing.