Granizo enorme! (Huge hail).

Whoa, whoa...what a storm. I basically forgot the day I had at the estancia due to the insane weather on our way home. Yesterday I went with IES to San Antonio de Areco, which was fun. (The asado was not the best, but the museum on Molinas Campo was very nice). On our way back I immediately fell asleep and started napping. I was woken up by these flashes of something and when I looked to my right I noticed a lot of light in the sky. There was so much light, I thought it had to be a show or some concert. After a little bit and finally fully waking up I realized it was lightning! I love lightning and thunder storms so I moved to the other side of the bus and just started watching. It was like no other storm I had seen, only lightning bolts about every second with no rain and no thunder that I could hear. Can I call that an electrical storm? I wish I could have snapped some photos of the lightning, because it really was kicking ass, huge bolts basically would just keep the entire sky lit up.

After the show of lightning came some rain. It started out slowly, than grew and grew into torrential rain. After the rain came the small pieces of hail. I have seen hail many times and was accustomed to hail storms. However, this did not stop at small balls of hail. They soon became huge balls of ice, some got to the size of softballs. The roof of the bus sounded as if we were in a fight with the Gods. BOOM, BAM, BOOM, BAM. Almost shaking the entire area and denting every part the balls of ice hit. As we looked outside, it seemed as if all hell had broken loose. Every single car's roof was dented and damaged. Car's back windows and front windows were all broken. If they were not completely broken, the entire window was cracked. It was insane. I was in complete shock while watching this. I almost thought this may be what the end of the world is like. When people on the bus were freaking out, the bus driver (Pablo=saint) started telling us to just calm down and put our hands up against the glass windows on the right side. That was were the wind was coming from and our hands would diminish the vibrations created if the hail hit the glass. He was very calm and reassuring. As the 30 plus students put their hands up against the bus, we looked on as every car near us was damaged and broken.

After about 10 minutes, the hail subsided and it became a drizzle of rain. I was in a state of shock for at least two hours after and still can not really believe that I saw something so extreme. Argentina, you keep amazing me.

Long time no see

Ah, it has been a while since I posted. I am just going to already warn anyone who reads this (do people even read my blog? Because in all honesty I just write for myself and dont assume people follow this blog...) that this entry will be most like a journal. I already write entries that are pretty random and at times I may not put in those couple extra sentences to make sure it flows, well this will be like that.
These past two days I have really been missing my friends back home, maybe because my parents are coming soon, maybe because I left Rosario, I dont know. I just miss being with people and just hanging out. It is hard to go from college life, where you live with your friends and thus see them all the time to living in a house with a senora. Trust, me I really enjoy being in Buenos Aires and the city but it is hard at times to get use to being alone again and being ok with not doing something, etc. I always get like this, even at home in Portland when I dont have people to hang out with. I feel like I should always be busy or something or always with someone. Is that our generation now or just me? I think it also may have to do with being in a comfort zone, my friends know me and I know them, and I love them. There is no doubt that we dont want to hang out or do stuff, because we are friends. I am not forced into hanging out with IES students or things like that, but it is a group that you kind of choose from in a way. And I really like a lot of people here, they are chill and cool. But it cant be like friends back home, because we only have a certain months and we dont live with each other or in a dorm.
The thing with Rosario that I explain to people is that I enjoy being in a calm, chill place. I enjoy the friends I have there and enjoy the environment that is not as busy as the city. I probably also just being in a house where I can freely hang out and talk with everyone in spanish (another big one, that I can speak spanish and not english). I am excited for the viejos to come, people who know me.

I think i am just in one of those dips, Ill get out of it, but just like to vent when stuck in them.

Disneyland o Iguazu?

This weekend I went to Iguazu with a bunch of other students or more so there just happened to be a lot of students going at the same time. As we arrived at Retiro for our 8 oclock bus we encountered the muchedumbre or mass of people that were trying to travel for semana santa. I heard that people would be traveling, but never thought that Retiro would be filled, body to body by people. Our bus was late and the best part was that I heard a bus wouuld be leaving by our company at 8 pm from boletero 37, so told everyone we should head that way. At that point we were at boletero 45ish or something. It took probably like 25 minutes or more to push our way through the crowd of people, I was almost pushed over by the people near me and was STRUGGLING to carry my duffel bag and my backpack that I had for the front. I dont think it was necesarry to take a shower before this, because by the end of the whole event (after we waited and finally found out the bus was arriving and after we got on) I was drenched in sweat. My whole tshirt was wet and I just felt disgusting.

After the whole adventure and after 20 hours in bus we arrived at Puerto Iguazu! Yay! If I thought Retiro was hot, whew was I wrong. Iguazu was humid and hot. The only thing I wanted to do was jump in the hostels pool. Which I did, but after we went grocery shopping for the night. The hostel looked like a resort, it had a huge pool and outdoor bar with music, everything. Later I found out the one thing missing was that the community kitched sucked balls, there was nothing in it and I was supposed to be cooking for about 10 to 12 people...ahh I dont even want to go into that dinner. The pasta turned out to salty because there was no sea salt and I put in too much regular salt in the water...ahh...lets just not talk about it. I need to redeem my cooking later in life and invite everyone that tasted that pasta to my house. Besides that the hostel was great.

On Friday we set off for la parque de Iguazu! I started off the day hiking the sendero de Macuco, which was nice. But the whole entire trail was covered with HUGE spiders in these gigantic webs above our heads. I had to duck a couple of times. This scared me a little bit..and took away from my enjoyment in the trail. Oh well, after we started on the caminos or walks of the waterfalls. Every area was packed with people and tourists. This was probably due to the weekend we chose to visit, but also probably normal for the most part.

I was ok with the amount of people, but slowly realized that I could not really appreicate and take in the beauty of the waterfalls with the shouts, conversations, trash, and distractions of the crowd. I have felt that nature should be enjoyed in silence or at least I enjoy being in nature and taking in the beautiful silence that it inspires. At this park, there was no silence. (Maybe only on the sendero de Macuco). By the end when we tried to go to Gargantas del Diablo, there was a line we had to wait for. Which by the way, all the trains that took you places had lines that you had to wait for at least 30 minutes or more (no thank you, we walked everywhere). Well, I was already suffering a lot from the heat and humiditiy and to add onto this the wait for las gargantas was pretty hard on me. I think I started getting the symptoms for heat stroke about this time and once I arrived at the Devils Throat I had such a bad headache and felt so shitty that I could not really take in the beauty of the place. I have to admit that they were incredible and really amazing, every single waterfall had a rainbow to accompany it, but the people, the heat and the lines just destroyed a little bit of their natural beauty. Thus, by the end of the day I was not the happiest camper.

I know Iguazu is stupendous and breathtaking, because it was. But the fact that it reminded me of Disneyland and not a national park disappointed me a little bit. I think that Patagonia and the Glaciar Perito Moreno have a leg up (is that the phrase?) on Iguazu, just purely for the fact that they do not remind me of the magical kingdom and I could really enjoy the natural beauty that was the glacier, by myself and in silence.