The Road Less Traveled: Getting buzzed in church

Saturday, yesterday, and today Elsia and I are house sitting for one of her older brothers. On Saturday one of her friends came to stay with us for the weekend. They made pizza for dinner, and Elisa told me that around 11pm people would come over to have a hangout/party. One friend arrived before we ate, but at 11:30 still nobody else had shown up. An hour later people finally started to arrive. Just an hour and a half late, whatevs. I will blame part of it on the waterfall that was coming from the clouds and the other part on the much more relaxed pace of life here. I think I am almost used to it now. The girls painted nails and the guys went outside to play Fooseball I think. Then some of us got to show off some of our piano skills and typical party tricks: being double jointed, little jokes, and (my personal trick) being able to lick my elbow.

The girls painting nails

Agu and I

A dessert unique to Bell Ville. And my hair is done in a way that a lot of girls do their hair.

I was trying to look as Argentine as possible that night.

Yesterday we stayed at the house until time to go to church. This was my third time to go to church here. They take communion every Sunday...and it is a tad bit different. We stay seated and people pass arounds plates with the bread on it. We take a bit for ourselves and eat it then. Someone prays. Then the, er, grapejuice is passed around. First time I thought, "This grapejuice is kind of brown. Maybe it is handmade grapejuice or something." I drank it. And it burned!!! That was definiately NOT grapejuice. The next Sunday I am prepared for the wine. I thought it would be ok that time since I knew it was alcohol. I thought it only burned because I was expecting sweet grapejuice and not tart wine. I thought wrong. It burned the second time going down too. I am convinced it is whiskey and not wine. I have never seen brown, Jack-Daniel's-colored wine before. Yesterday I was ready for my Jesus Juice shot, and after that I felt I was ready to go out and hit the town! haha.

After church we went to the river to go to Aquarama 2012. It was like a weekend long concert with different acts for the whole city. First we saw tango. It was so awesome to finally see people in Argentina doing the tango in real life. I have looked up tango in Argentina countless times on Youtube. I wanted to cry, take pictures, and pee in my pants when I saw it for the first time! Then there was a comedian. Even though I couldn't really understand him, I could still tell that he wasn't that good. After he was gone we waited and waited and waited for the next act to set up. We shared maté, chatted, and I got sprayed in the eye with the Argentine equivalent of Silly String. It is just water foam that looks like fake snow, but it wasn't so fun to have sprayed in my eye. The next group to go was a folkloric band. They, were, awesome!! They actually had talent too! They didn't need crazy outfits, insane lights, and mind-blowing stunts to have the crowd go nuts. They just sang their freaking hearts out! (Disclaimer: I love the outfits, lights, and stunts too...it had just been a while since the last time I saw real talent like that.) I want to get their album so I can learn the lyrics and sing like them in my car on road trips. After they were done, there was something like the Dairy Festival. Instead of floats in a parade, the contestants decorated canoes and floated down the river. So they were floats..literally!! Each girl was sponsored by a different group or company and the floats had different themes. A weird thing was that along with her interests, school, and life dreams, they would tell how much each girl weighed. I can just imagine the protests and madness that would happen if something like that was to happen in an event like the Dairy Festival.

A portion of the people that were there.