Quick Trip to Uruguay

Hey Everybody,

I´m back. Last week, I started most of my classes which were pretty interesting. Finding the classes is also turning out to be quite a challenge. In total, I´m taking five classes, three of which are located in FLACSO headquarters, which is really close to my house.
I´m also taking two direct enrollment classes in the universities here. This is called the Shopping period, which is a period in which we attend classes to see if we like them or not. I´ve attended three classes, one of which I´ll choose for one of the two spots and I´m pretty sure which class I´m going to be taking for my last class.
However, getting to these classes and finding the rooms is proving to be challenging. First, it takes about forty minutes to get to the Universidad Catolica Argentina here in Buenos Aires. After arriving at the university, trying to find where the listings are of classrooms for each class took another good hour at the university. Finally, some professors show up around thirty minutes late for class or change classrooms at the last minute. Actually particpating in the class and understanding the Spanish has been the easy part.

This weekend, I headed off to Uruguay with my friend Kelsey from Georgetown. On Thursday, we boarded a Buquebus ferry from the Puerto Madero here in Buenos Aires that took us across the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay. We hopped on a bus to the capital, Montevideo. That night we went to the Pony Pisador, which was a small bar in the middle of the capital, right near our hostel. The next morning, we headed to all the sites in the capital, from the plaza to the theatres, to the Rambla (which overlooks the sea), to multiple musuems, one of which was about the history of Uruguay, the other was called the Museum of the Cowboy (Gaucho) and the Moneda (Coin). It was a random pairing, but pretty informative. Finally, we headed to the docks of the city, where there was a bazaar-type of event.
Finally, we headed back to the bus station, Tres Cruces, where we jumped on a bus to Punto del Este. When we arrived, we checked into our hostel and met up with other kids in the program. The next day, we headed to the beach. It was a really nice day until around seven when a storm moved in, so we packed up from the beach and headed to get some dinner.
The next morning Kelsey and I headed off to Colonia, which is a touristy town in Uruguay, right across the river from Buenos Aires. We visited the lighthouse there, a few plazas, and the oldest church in Uruguay. The architecture was incredible and the cobblestone streets were really cool. Finally, we took the ferry back to Buenos Aires and I headed to bed.

In Uruguay one of the craziest things was the money. In Argentina, 3.6 pesos is equivalent to 1 dollar US. In Uruguay, 24 Uruguayan pesos are equivalent to 1 dollar US. With this exchange rate, it was so hard to figure out what the real prices were! But I can´t imagine figuring out this rate frequently!

Hope things are well back home! And thanks for the comments everybody! It´s really nice to hear from you! I´ll post pictures from the trip later this week!

Update: Heres a slideshow of the pics: