Concord and Concordia

I traveled to Salto again this past weekend and Shamari and I visited Concordia, Argentina.  We primarily walked (semi) aimlessly around, ate lots of food, and slept... it was great.  We took a boat across the river from Salto on Saturday morning and we took a taxi back to the border on Sunday where a friend picked us up.  Then, of course, we had an asado by the river, hung out, played a little soccer, and ate delicious food (thanks Alejandro y Jesus!)
Pictures!
Here is Shamari with his long-sought after brownie (without nuts!) and smoothie (it's really hard to find brownies in Uruguay, especially without nuts)

 Here's a picture of me with a delicious submarino, which is basically like hot chocolate on steroids because they give you real chocolate and you just stir it together.

 I've become a border rat :)... this is me sitting in the sun on the border of Uruguay and Argentina while we waited for Jesus to pick us up (yes, we got a ride from Jesus).

Here is a picture of the river where we had the asado and Michael and Nicolas playing soccer (we had to chase the ball to prevent from going into the river several times, this was mostly my fault, because I have such good coordination...)

I'm back in Paysandu now, and this week has brought more of a routine.  I'm beginning to actually do work and give presentations in classes and interact with the students more.  I've also started to get in a running routine, which is great, and I love running by the river because it's really pretty and it's still warm here.  I've started going to Chemistry classes (in spanish!) as well and I can understand more than I thought I would.  I think (I hope) my spanish is getting a little better every day... it's still hard to communicate sometimes, and I can understand more than I can say, but I'm working on it.  I had to give a presentation about myself and the Fulbright program objectives (why I'm here) last night to a library full of high school teachers in Spanish.  I don't think it went fantastically, but I do think they could understand me and my mentors reassured me that no, I didn't look like total idiot, and I did "very well." Yay :)

More Pictures- my mentor, Adriana took this picture of me with some students during our first conversation "club" yesterday.

I took this picture when I was running by the river in the sunshine :)

I took this picture of some horses by the river, too (the one laying down isn't dead, it's a baby and I think it was trying to bother it's mom, or being lazy, both of which I'm sure my mom is used to...)

I'll post some more pictures of where I'm living/ my room after I've cleaned it a bit ;)

went swimming, found chili and corn bread

The fact that I pretty much need to be busy all the time in order to be productive was recently reinforced.  I thought for some reason that "part time" teaching actually meant "full time" and that I would be busy all the time... not true.  I again have free time, which is good because after I've looked up all the words I don't know each day in my dictionary, it's usually time to go to sleep.  However, I've also begun pursuing activities that could form the base of my side project(s).

First, I found a new running buddy!!  His name is Finde, he is five months old, furry, and full of energy (pictured below).  He belongs to my "mama" my host mom's mom.

I also joined a rowing club that has a gym and a pool where I can swim (I went today for the first time).  My mom is actually a south american champion swimmer and my host sister rows so I think we're all going to go one day (and I'm sure I'll get my butt kicked, but it will be fun).  I also registered for a 5K race at the end of the April in Montevideo that is organized by Nike Uruguay and is called "She Runs Montevideo" it's an all women's race! I'm pumped about it especially because I will need to find more running buddies when I move to Montevideo in June.

Tonight, I made chili and cornbread for dinner in my apartment (sunset view from the balcony).

It was delicious and we had a surprise American visitor who rode his bike from California down here, and he is staying with us tomorrow.  I made no bake cookies, as well, and it was kind of like being home, except my cooking was not as good as mom's, I had to look up the names of all the ingredients to buy them, and had to light the stove and oven with matches... and forgot to turn the gas off... but then remembered when my host mom smelled it :)

I've also begun my search for a coffee shop in which to hang out.  Today, I went to an adorable place and got a cafe con leche and alfajor (below!).  It awesome and delicious, but I was also the only one there because it's in the back of a store, so I'm not sure how often I'll go there because I felt a little like I was interrupting the otherwise very tranquil environment.

To finish, I taught at the high school (Liceo 1) for the first time today.  It went pretty well.  I'm supposed to speak English all the time, but I think I need to figure out a compromise because it seemed like a lot of the students couldn't understand a lot of what I said.  However, I'm also going to start sitting in on high school chemistry classes (in spanish!) next week... so I'm sure that will be interesting and probably make my brain hurt in every way possible (but that means it's growing, right?).