hey all,
well, i finally posted some photos here. if you click on slideshow, its prettier. also, you can push the little i on the photo to see the description of where or what it is.
since i left brazil, i met up with my friends Ed (biclops), Shaunak (sideshow), and Noel (kobe) in Montevideo, Uruguay while sipping on banana juice on the corner of avenida 18 de julio and concepcion. it was too easy. on our first day there, there was an epic 6 hour long parade in the street for carnival with a ton of crazy bands, costumes, dancers, and drummers. we were all jetlagged a bit from our voyage to the city (them from LA and me from Brazil)... but we managed to stay out the whole time and not really understand much of it.
From there, we went out to a beach town on the coast, where there was an ocean of brown water... mmmmmm.. but we decided to embrace the weird looking water and swim. that was about a week and a half ago and im still alive, so that makes me happy. we mostly just got caught up with our sleep and lougning there for a few days.
after that, we went back to montevideo to see more of the city, and the highlight of that trip was a soccer game. we saw the biggest match in the country between division 1 teams... they were rivals from the same city, so there was lots of passion (swearing) in the stands. before the game even started fireworks, dynamite, toilet paper, and water bottles were launched from the stands.
after that, we headed out to a little colonial town from the colonial era called colonia. its colonious to the maxxx. its actually really nice there. along with montevideo, we met lots of other foreigners (but only a couple united statesians) there, and had fun hanging out with all them. we taught an irish girl what a n00b is, and we also met a girl who is roommates with the ex captian of the UCSD womens ultimate frisbee team, who ed knows apparently. small world. one day we rented a little golf cart and took it really far away... probably outside of our boundaries, but we got to explore quite a bit of the city. we got some pretty strange looks though when 4 out of place guys cruised by on a little golf cart.
we passed some time in a few smaller towns, which was a lot of "why are you here" looks, but the people were actually really nice once we would talk to them. actually... AHEM, being the most experienced with spanish out of the four of us, i am the usual nominee for figuring everything out when it involves talking to people, so ive gotten some extra practice. shaunak and ed took high school spanish, so they can say basic things... but understand less when people speak to them. i can usually understand half the people here, its a weird accent.
another big highlight of the trip thus far has been the carnival parade we saw in gualeguaychu, argentina. there were some pretty big floats, and lots of scantily clad women (and less notably, men) dancing around in the corsodormo for like 4 hours... it was really fun. shaunak and i snuck into the front row at one point, so we got to get some prime seats. after the last set of drummers, the crowd piled into the street and we all followed singing about some political thing thats going on with uruguay about a paper factory polluting their river. i met 3 guys then... one from italy, one from switzerland, and one from buenos aires, and they really liked me cause i said id email them a picture i took of them with one of the dancers, so they kind of adopted me as theirs... buying me drinks and telling me theyd give me a ride to this club where the italian had 17 gorgeous yoga instructors waiting for us. so ed and i ended up hanging out with them for a while and ended up goign to that place which was dark, crowded, and 6 am so we didnt stay long.
the next day, we were playing frisbee near the river, and everybody was amazed with the things we could do with it. one group of people started talking to us about it, and we let them play with us. lucas threw it in the river 2 times. they were really friendly, and called their friend to bring a guitar there so ed could play us some songs... he did, along with some mate (this drink that theyre obsessed with... kinda like tea). so, we sat around with them for like 4 hours and we might see them in a few weeks in buenos aires.
and now im in rosario. its quaint.
hope everyone is doing stupendously,
cody
PS: http://www.flickr.com/photos/
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