Happenings at and around CasaACU

Well, it has been entirely too long since I've updated what's been happening around her. I'm afraid I must confess its mainly laziness. The past two weeks have mainly been living life and trying to get things done in classes and such between trips... its a rough life. But here are some of the the highlights.

We had a group visit to the Torres-Garcia museum, which not surprisingly features the work of Joaquin Torres Garcia, an important Uruguayan artist. They not only took us of a tour of his work, but conducted a workshop in which we learned about the stages of his work as it was influenced by different cities he lived in. We had a really good time producing our own art. At the end the students divided into groups and did a drawing that represented what they learned.

Last Friday night Alli cooked for us again and we enjoyed enchiladas. We had found real jalapenos, so it was even spicy! We started decorating the house for Halloween. After dinner we piled into the loft and all watched a movie together. This group is so fun, and they really do love to be together.

It seems like I cannot come to study abroad without someone visiting an emergency room. Well, hopefully the only trip from this group occurred on Monday. At aerobics, one of the girls sprained her ankle. I had gone to the class before, so I wasn't there, but our friends from the gym drove her home. When I went to the gym the next day, they all came and asked me about her. They are so nice. (Oh and I may have I high- fived Matt in the middle of my conversation with Fabricio because I knew the word for sprain... I think it says something about my level of Spanish that I still high-five people when I know a word...) Anyway, Amber is ok, hopefully she'll be walking on it again soon.

Wednesday night, we had the annual Study Abroad Halloween Party. The Walkers and I fixed dinner. Wimon mixed the batter and sauces and I manned the skillets to make crepes. At the high point, I was running three skillets at once... I'm awesome. The students really did a great job of coming up with costumes from the stuff around the house, with a little help from Halloween make up. We had every thing from the Fanta girls, to a helado man, and a guy and girl who dressed as each other. It was really fun.



Now I know that I sometimes give an impression that we play all the time. But we've been having to do quite a bit of work, including adding an extra biochem class and had exams in both classes. I took my camera to the P-chem exam because I wanted to download some pictures from it. The students thought I had brought to take pictures of the exam. When they mentioned it, it seemed like a good idea, so we did. This is not posed, they are actually being tortured.

Next week is our free travel week. We have split up into three groups: Peru, Chile, and Argentina. The first group left around 4:15 on Thursday afternoon to fly out to Lima, Peru. We all gathered around to hug them goodbye. The next group left for Chile around 5:30. That just left the 6 of us that are going to Ushuaia, we aren't leaving until Saturday, so we have the house all to ourselves.

Working with a smaller group, we came up with a good way to console ourselves and headed to eat Mexican food. Now its not quite as good as the Tex Mex we are used to, but after not having tortilla chips for 2 months, we were really excited. We really had a good time. Our plan when we got home was to watch a movie. It was a really warm night however, so we decided to move our movie watching party into the courtyard. So we rolled the classroom tv outside and carried out some mattresses we aren't using. We then piled onto the mattresses and watched Harry Potter 3.


Oh and when we were carrying out the mattresses, we may or may not have slid down the CasaACU steps on the mattress.