Entre Rios, entre caminos

sábado 5 de enero, 2013

I spent 10 days in Concepción de Uruguay with Maia and her family…  Wow, ¡qué fantástico!  I had such a great time!

Maia was with her mother and two brothers in Concepción, which is in the province Entre Rios, on a river (Río Uruguay, along the border with Uruguay).  They also have three dogs, which are all very cute, but muy molestos (obnoxiously annoying!)

From left: Eimi, Enzo, and Mora

When I arrived, it was SO HOT.  Like, if you moved, you’d start to sweat.  Definitely a climate change from Bariloche!

My Christmas experience this year was quite different from my norm.  On Christmas Eve we had dinner and then stayed up for a midnight toast—followed by fireworks.  And opening presents.  Then Maia’s brothers and their girlfriends went to the city plaza for some all-night partying.  I wanted to go, but they didn’t leave until 4AM… I just couldn’t do it, I went to sleep, haha (like I said, quite different from a typical American Christmas!)

Our week was filled with…

lots of beach days:

This is Maia and me at the beach.  It’s not a lake or a sea beach, it’s the beach along the river—which makes for a different beach experience, but it’s beach all the same.  Actually, at this time the river was really high—we were lucky to find the strip of beach that we did, because a lot of it was covered with water!

Okay, this technically is not the beach, but we still went swimming and laid out in the sun.  This is Las Termas, an aqua center just outside of Concepción.  They had lots of different pools, each a different set temperature—from cold swimming pools to pools that felt like you were swimming in a hot tub!

Temperature: 39 degrees (Celsius!)

Our final beach day consisted of taking a catamaran to an island in the river.  Really nice beach there, but again… due to high waters, there wasn’t as much beach as usual!

I went to the beach and tanned a bit… in December… can’t do that in Michigan!

a couple asados (barbeques):

The boys supervising the backyard asado

and lots of mate drinking (it took me six months… but Carolina has finally acquired the taste of mate!)  Mate amargo (with hot water, no sugar) is still not my beverage of choice, but there’s nothing like having the late afternoon merienda with friends and/or family, sharing mate and some galletitas or pan dulce.  I might just bring the merienda back to the States with me…  I also had terere for this first time; this is a cold version of yerba mate, made with orange (or your fruit of choice) juice.  I know, sounds weird—but it’s actually quite delicious and refreshing.

New Year’s Eve was similar to Christmas.  First, we had dinner:

Maia’s mom prepared a super creative dinner!  She made little masitas with three different fillings (chicken, tuna, and veggie)… topped off with some smiley faces!  And that mouse?  An ornamented hard-boiled egg!  Our dinner was paired with the wine I brought from Chile… which the family loved!

And for dessert, more masitas, this time with a delicious fruit filling :)

Then we had a toast and watched fireworks from the roof… followed by partying in the city plaza (I actually stayed up this time)!  That was so fun.  There was this huge vehicle equipped with music that slowly circled the plaza all night.  Maia and I left before the rest of the crew, but staying out till 6AM was still an accomplishment for me :)

My last night in Concepción was really tranquil and pleasant; we had some pizza and watched Amores Perros (a really good Mexican film).  The next day (January 2) I took a bus to Buenos Aires.  I was sad to leave Maia and her family… I really enjoyed spending the holidays with them, sincerely!

This week was a really nice break from traveling.  I love seeing new places, but it’s also nice to stop the running around and just enjoy one place for a while (and if there’s a beach to lay out at, even better).

And, amidst all my travels, a bunch of thoughts whizzed through my head, and a lot of things back home happened too, which all made me rethink where I want to be in this moment in my life.  Eventually, I decided that moving to Mendoza wasn’t actually my next best adventure.  In fact, I’ve decided to come home, and as I publish this new post, I'm... well, home, back in DeWitt, Michigan. 

Maybe this sounds cold and abrupt.  I’ll follow up with another post elaborating on exactly what I’m going through in a little bit.  But for now, I want to close saying that life is amazingly wonderful.  Sometimes it’s predictable, and sometimes it’s absolutely not.  But it always manages to grow and teach us.  I am so thrilled with all the blessings I’ve experienced in Argentina, and I came home content and proud of what I’ve done there.