Been a while

Well, my blog readers, I have been negligent. I haven't been updating my blog enough nor have I been writing anything down outside of the blog. This entry will probably be long, or short and disjointed. Regardless, you will know more about what I have been doing.

I'll mention a few things that I forgot last entry about our trip to the ranch:
The ranch is a touristy place so they have some demonstrations and such. One of the things they have there is a model of the old train system that used to be in Montevideo. It made me think of Grandpa Rod (for those of you who didn't know him, he collected model trains and had a model train system set up).
On the way back from the ranch our bus blew out a tire. Now, I've seen flat tires, but this tire was dead. It was in shreds. Now, let's move on.

The main thing that has happened is our trip to Buenos Aires. We spent the afternoon in Colonia, Uruguay, but we stopped at a random farm on the way to Colonia. The owner of this farm is a collector. Of what? You name it. Keychains, pencils, calling cards, ash trays, perfume bottles, and other odd things. He holds several world records (some of which have since been broken). They also make jam. They had most of the normal flavors (strawberry, peach, yadda yadda) and some not so normal (tomato, red pepper, and onion). The onion one was nasty. We spent about an hour there and then we were off to Colonia.

Colonia is the oldest city in Uruguay (?, I'm pretty sure but let's be safe). We drove past an old bullfighting arena that was built in the early 1900s right before bullfighting was outlawed. Now, I'm not going to say that there were signs that said not to enter and we did anyway, but...

Other than that we just explored the town and relaxed for the afternoon. We walked up on an old section of the city wall and sat down by the water for a bit. Then we headed to the Buquebus (the ferry between Uruguay and Argentina). The ferry ride was okay on the way over, but on the way back the water was rougher so we were all feeling a bit queesy on the second trip. When we got to Buenos Aires we went to our hotel and then grabbed some dinner at an Italian place down the block. It was great. The next day we went on a tour of the city that took us by the president's office building (the Pink House), several monuments, both the richest and poorest neighborhoods, and the cemetary. Now, when I say cemetary you have the wrong picture in your mind right away. Think of a city with buildings that are very close together. Now shrink the buildings a little. Now I'll just show you.

This is one of the "streets" in the cemetary. The place is HUGE. There were tons of different statues and types of tombs and such. I came back to the cemetary the next day to take pictures and wander around some more.

We spent some time in La Boca which was one of the poorest neighborhoods when immigrants were pouring into the Americas from Europe. The whole neighborhood is made up of random building materials (scrap metal, mismatched windows, etc.) and painted bright colors. The story goes that an artist decided to paint all the buildings because he didn't think they had to be sad just because they were poor. We also came back there the next day and ate at an open air restaurant with a free tango show.

We went to another tango show with the whole group that was pretty good. The food was really good. I got a steak (because even though beef is supposed to be a staple food in Uruguay our cooks don't cook it for us much) which was delicious. Also I finally got some awesome coffee. My addiction was satisfied for a short time. Some of us saw a few other musical performances: a jazz band and a weird hippie band. They were both pretty good, but not the greatest thing ever. But at least we had some adventures.

Sunday we went to the church that Hannah was with when she stayed in Argentina. We were supposed to go to a market near the church after service but it was raining so we stayed and played foosball and ping pong and ate pizza. The people there were a lot of fun and we had a blast.

I know I'm forgetting things but I'm tired of typing and I'm sure you're getting tired of reading so we'll call it quits for now and I'll try to be better about updating. I love you all. May God put a fire in your heart that you cannot help but be His light to those around you.

Blessings,
Matt