Friday, March 19, 2004

La Semana Novata

So it is tradition here to have bunch of welcoming activities during one week for all of the new students (at my university there are 5,000). Last Saturday, there was a party in one of the clubs, and yesterday, there was a party on the beach that I went to. We had to pay 2500 pesos for the bus there and back- it was about an hour and a half ride. We spent the whole day on the beach and it was a beautiful day.

I guess that normally, the beach that we went to is usually pretty quiet, but not with a few thousand people there. There was music playing all day and a few BBQs- much better than going to class. Plus, I met some pretty cool people. I was beat by the time I came home, since the night before I had gone out for St. Patty´s day. I slept almost twelve hours last night!

Some Things That I REALLY Miss
1. Smoke-free environments (they smoke in shopping malls, restaurants, buses, you name it)
2. Free public restrooms (at the beach I had to pay 150 pesos for some toilet paper and entrance into a dirty bathroom)
3. Cottage cheese (they have just about every other kind of cheese but this. But they do have really good fresh goat cheese almost everywhere, so that kind of makes up for it)
4. Reno´s clean air (the smog is horrendous here- worse than San Bernardino)
5. My family and friends (duh- that one doesn´t need to be explained)

The Lady I Live With

Ok, she is a litte on the paranoid side. She is afraid to keep the window open because she swears that someone is going to come in, despite the fact that there are iron bars on the outside of the window. And we figured out that we can only have hot or cold water- there is no in between. So she won´t shower because the water is too hot and she is afraid it is going to burn her. And our apartment is right at the entrance of the building, so whenever anyone enters, she usually has to check to see who it is. She doesn´t get out much because she is afraid that someone is going to assault her because Santiago is ¨dangerous¨. So I have been trying to talk some sense into her, but it isn´t that easy.

posted by Rebecca @ 3/19/2004 01:55:00 PM