mis companeras

These are my roommates, the girls that I spend a ridiculous amount of my waking time with. I am somehow not sick of either of them yet, which is surprising considering how much Megan time I usually need.

Calla, the curly haired redhead on the left is one of my favorite people on the program. She's made up of sunshine and rainbows and everything nice, but has enough spice and sarcasm to make her interesting. She started out as a nursing major at Mayo Clinic, but transferred to the U and is now a Global Studies major. Considering I'm always with her, awkward individual shots of Calla make up the majority of the pictures I have on my camera. She was a lovely sidekick to pick up.

Renee is on the right, a psychology major from the University of Illinois-Chicago. She's very very blunt, down to earth and also married (!). She also knows random facts about everything, which are a welcome addition to our nightly wine talks around the table. The three of us balance each other nicely..Calla's the optimist, Renee's the realist and I'm somewhere in the middle. Our conversations are almost always interesting, as we're all from completely different backgrounds, yet are all very opinionated. Last night's talk was regarding if love at first sight is actually possible. If I'm feeling particularly inspired, I might dive into this subject on a later post. The other thing that I appreciate about my roommates is that we are capable of comfortable silences. No one feels the need to chatter to fill up empty spaces in the conversation..we are content to leave it be and be alone with our thoughts. We went to an outdoor cafe last night to get pizza and beer ('MERICA!) and eventually I noticed that we'd been sitting in silence for about 8 minutes, without it being the slightest bit awkward. And I liked that.

This weekend, a small group of us is taking a bus 6 hours south to Mar del Plata, the biggest seaside beach resort in Argentina. A round trip bus ticket costs US $45 and the hostel we're staying in is going to end up costing us approximately $3 each. I'm ridiculously excited about this trip for a few reasons:

- It has a beach and ocean (the obvious)

- I like the idea of going with a small group -- it makes it a lot easier to get to know people when we're not in a cozy group of 30.

- I managed to arrange the entire trip speaking Spanish. Somewhere along the way, I became the group spokesperson (no idea how this happened). Managing to find an obscure bus station and procuring round trip tickets for 5 people while speaking solely in Spanish gave me the biggest sense of accomplishment I've had in awhile.

- We might do water activities. By 'water activities', I do not mean swimming. I mean windsurfing, deep sea diving, etc.

There are definitely a few people from my group that are starting to get on my nerves a bit (read: annoy the hell out of me), but the main thing that bothers me is how few people want to speak Spanish outside of class. When we go to bars, etc...we're the obnoxious, loud Americans speaking English. This does not help us make friends. I'm amazingly fluent in English..I want to learn Spanish.

I'm excited for Audra to get here.

I eat too much pizza. More on the food here later.

It's rainy today, which far from making me unhappy, is making me even happier. I need a good, gloomy day once in awhile. I've been curled up in bed reading The Hobbit, and I think we're going to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button later.

Life is still good. I'm essentially on vacation here, and this weekend I'm taking a vacation from my vacation. What? Feeling lucky and grateful and 1.4% homesick.