BARILOCHE!!

Well today was my first dia completo en San Carlos de Bariloche, the ski town we´re in for the weekend. It took us a 23 hour bus ride to get all the way down here- Bariloche is a cute mountain town in the Andes in the Provencia de Rio Negro. The bus ride wasn´t as horrible has I had imagined- the seats reclined into semi-camas and they played about 4 movies and fed us. Our bus even had a little bus attendant guy who would amazingly carry a trayfull of scalding hot beverages around the bus. (Yeah you thought being a flight attendant is bad- at least they get to see different countries! lol) But there´s only so many prepacked meals and random movies you can take really...We only got off the bus for like one 10 min break.. thats right, ONE. unbelieveable lol. The first part of our ride was pretty...flat. it looked like Texas or something... you could look for miles and only see dirt and small shrubbery for miles and miles with no variation of altitude. After awhile it started to look more like Northern New Mexico or Arizona or somewhere southwest-ish with some more variation and hills and such but still dry and mostly dead ( it is winter though lol). For the last few hours it became really beautiful. you could see the snowcapped mountains in the distance, the huge beautiful lake that turned into a river and into a lake and went on forever. I took some pics on the bus (they´ll be up soon) and it realy is a beatiful place. I´d love to see it in the spring or summer where everything is more green and stuff but even in the winter I was like, wow, this pace is awesome. And definitely worth the daylong busride.
so we arrived thursday night around 7 or 8 and ventured to find ourselves a hostel. Oh I don´t think I mentioned this, but a few people from the original group going decided to bail out (including Adelaide) so I ended up coming down here with 4 boys lol. Hasn´t been too bad to far, just strange being the only girl... Anyway, yeah we got ourselves a hostel in el centro of the little town and its nice- perfect size, free internet, plenty of room and good price. After checkin in we were all starved and ventured out into Bariloche. The town is really cute, but really touristy. We found an awesome Parilla (place that serves awesome asortment of grilled meats) for dinner and had some good meat and wine. So apparently once kids graduate high school in Argentina, they all take these ski trips to Bariloche and parade around the streets wearing these matching outfits singing crazy songs and such lol. Like today at the mountain there was a group of like 100 kids sportin bright orange from head to toe. (That´s another thing I have noticed- kids and uniforms. Remind me to talk about that some other day because I keep forgetting lol)
So they boys and I planned to get up early and head to ski at Cerro Catedral which is like a 20 minute busride from town. Now the only thing I was worried abut going with these kids was that they are all way obsessed with( and good at) snowboarding and me... well yeah, as you know I´m not the biiigest cold weather fan and I don´t ski nor snowboard lol. but I figured I would go and give it a try. At the mountain you can rent everything from clothes to boards to hats to gloves and boots, and all for pretty cheap. I also got a 2 hour private lesson since I figured it´d be worth the money and I´d have more fun if I knew what I was doing kinda lol. The lesson was great! It was hard but I did a lot better than I had thought I would. My instructor Rodrigo was Argentine but lived half of the year working here in Bariloche and the other half workin in Andorra, Spain. Pretty sweet life really. It was neat because we didn´t like start down at the bunny hill with all the 5 year olds as I had imgagined. and I even got to go down this like, real slope! haha I was proud and it was really fun. I learned a couple things but once the lesson was over, I had a harder time doing them on my own. PLus I was pretty tired. It takes a lot outta ya really. I met up with the boys to get the lunch we had made the night before and then I ended up being on my own for awhile. and I dunno... it was tough. I really began wishing there was someone else here more my skill level.. it´s fun going down and sutff but hard and lonely a little.. haha I know I know pobrecita, but I eventually just gave in and headed back to the hostel, took a little siesta and a shower and decided to take advantage of the free internet. I was out there for a pretty long time so I figured for my first time did okay lol. I haven´t decided if I am going to go another day. I am going to ask the people here at the hostel abuot other excursion options- even if i have to go alone it should be okay since id be at the moutain alone anyway lol.
Well, I think that is about it for now. Tonight I think we may be checkin out some nightlife (we´ll see how it compares to Bueno Aiiiires, as if thas possible lol). but it looks like I will be able to update and chck emails here so leave me some comments and such!

Also: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!!!!!!!! MUCHOS BESOS DE SU HIJA EN ARGENTINA!!!
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