I'VE CAUGHT A DISEASE... by Katie Cukrowski

I have South American sleeping sickness! And there is no vaccination available!

Since the day we got here, over 40 days ago, I think there have only been something 3 days that I haven't taken a nap. Wow! This Friday, my nap was almost 5 hours long, spanning from right after lunch to just a couple minutes before dinner! I take said nap right after lunch every day because I'm full from the amazing meal I've just eaten here and when I go upstairs to my room, it's nice and warm with the rhythmic hum of cars outside that just lulls me to sleep.

I can't fight it. It's too strong. And it wins everytime!

Now, it's not just me with this "disease", because right around this time every day, the house goes quiet. Even if you are out at this time somewhere in town, there won't be very many people out there either. It's Siesta time, baby!!!

[Pictured are recent photos of Mom, Krista, and me sleeping at various airports (Buenos Aires, Argentina and Santiago, Chile to be specific) on Spring Break. Normally we would be sleeping in our beds, but, because we were all asleep, we have no pictures of such!]

THE LITTLE MERMAIDS

So, today we went to an estancia, which is a working ranch, where one can ride horses and do a lot of other things as well. The last time the girls rode horses, on our weekend trip to Cabo Polonio, their route was—no kidding—exactly on a fault line where Africa broke off from South America and you can essentially see one of the great land shifts. How cool is that?!
Today's favorite activity, however, beating out the bike rides, the pool table, the good food, and the playground, was the huge, bonafide, fabulously 
clean
swimming
pool. OK, it's cool to be around rivers and oceans and lakes—but when it comes to playing in the water, nothing beats good ol' chlorine, the stuff our little mermaids were trained in and that they have in their own backyard! 

Additionally, somehow we had neglected to use the underwater feature on Katie's camera before now. I suspect this oversight will be corrected this summer once we return to Abilene, because they had so much fun playing Ariel!

WHAT OUR SCHOOL DAY'S LIKE-- by Katie Cukrowski

The blog you've all been waiting for--The school day!

8:00 Mom comes in to wake up Krista and me for the day.

8:30 Go downstairs for breakfast (cereal, toast, bacon, eggs, pancakes, waffles, milk, orange juice, coffee, and tea).

9:00 Chapel starts (AKA: a devo done every Tuesday and Thursday by two college students who switch off weekly).

9:20 Chapel ends and everyone heads off to Spanish class.

9:30 Spanish begins. For the next hour and a half, I'm in a classroom at the church next door with all the other students, my family, and our teacher Amelia (pictured below with Dad). The teaching method Amelia uses is where she teaches something for about 5-10 minutes and then spends the next 10-20 minutes going around the room asking questions to each individual person about what we just learned. When she thinks we know everything about that certain subject she moves on and we start over again. This method really helps because we are speaking a lot and you have to know how to converse with people here, so her method works. We do this every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but on Thursdays we have a quiz over those last few days. This means that most Wednesday evenings are spent cramming for said quiz. Every week we cover about a chapter in the book (We also have workbooks where we do the exercises that correspond to what we learn each day. They are great because then you see the information in a practical way that you can actually use it).

11:00 Class is over for Krista, Mom, and me, but some of the kids have to stay for a class after that is taught by my dad. So when we are back at the house, Kris and I go into our parents' apartment to do homeschooling. Their apartment has 4 rooms (bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and a study/office), and it's in this office where we have all our textbooks and materials for homeschooling. How we've decided to do school here is different from how it is at a school because we kind of pick a subject, Chemistry, for example, and we do like an entire chapter that day, instead of doing one section today, one section tomorrow....,we do large amounts of one subject each day and that seems to work better for our schedule. So another day we might read the entire book we have to read for an English class or a chapter of biology, etc.

12:30 The other class Dad teaches is over now so it's lunchtime. Everyone heads downstairs for this meal and we go into the kitchen where there is a table that has all the food lined up on it and we make a line and you choose whatever you want. It works out really well because you eat what you like and don't what you don't; however, there isn't much that people don't like!! The two women who prepare our meals are named Raquel and Mariela and they serve a nice variety of food choices. We have had very normal things to eat like spaghetti, fajitas, fish, chicken, and sides like mashed potatoes and broccoli which are very good, but then some days we have more traditional Uruguayan dishes like empanadas, chivitos, and Shepherd's Pie, also very good! Everyday there is also a dessert that they make piled with whipped cream, chocolate sauce, or ice cream. Needless to say, this would not be the place or time to start a diet!

1:30 Time to head upstairs and take a nap!!! I believe in the siesta...

4:00 Wake up and continue with more homework.

7:00-ish Dinner time! Mom will either make a meal that day or we go out to eat. Eating out is very easy here and much cheaper than in the States. To get a pizza here is a little under two dollars...about the same price as a drink! We have found a few restaurants we really like and go there often. Right by the house there is also a gelato shop that we are regular customers at. When we don't eat out, however, we have over to the apartment different college kids and have them eat with us. That's nice because then you get to know some of them bettter.

8:00 From now on we have the rest of the day to do whatever. Usually, it consists of talking to friends on the computer, watching movies, playing games, reading a book, listening to music, doing Spanish and lots of other homework, or just talking to other people here.

12:00 Bedtime!

H2O

I don't like to swim. I get seasick when I cross the English channel or when I go whale-watching. I even prefer to drink Diet Coke (or Paso de los Toros!) to water. But I love to be near the water. I like the way the pool outside my house in Texas casts prisms of color on the ceiling.

I love the sound, the feel, the very waterness of water. We're practically surrounded by water here in Montevideo.

I even like canoeing or rafting on it, I who am the antithesis of an athlete.

We (the 14 of us who went to Peru for Spring Break)

went rafting on the Urubamba River outside of Cusco, and we had a great time. The Urubamba, by the way, goes to Machu Picchu, and it runs into another river that then runs into the phenomenol Amazon River. We rafted for about 2 1/2 hours, but the trip took all day, what with the hour-and-a-half bus ride each way, the delicious lunch they fed us, the instructions we received in order not to die on the rapids, and the putting on and taking off of wetsuits.

In about a week and a half, we will go to Brazil and see Iguaçu Falls. More water. I love it.

LA HOJA DE COCA NO ES DROGA

OK, this blog entry may be a little sketchy, but here goes anyway. The coca plant is a HUGE part of Peruvian society. The leaves of the coca plant are said to cure altitude sickness, diarrhea, and a host of other ailments. We saw many t-shirts and signs that carried the slogan that titles this blog, translated as "The coca leaf isn't a drug." Peruvians were selling coca candies, coca leaves, coca herbal remedies, etc. Katie bought a package of leaves for about 33 cents (we didn't let her take them out of the country, however, just in case.) 

For the record, I DO NOT support the use of cocaine. However, cocaine is a LONG ways away from the coca leaf. Really. And the tea is delicious. I drank it every day, and no, I wasn't the slightest bit impaired. My kids drank it. Even Ken tried it, but he prefers regular tea. I agree with the Peruvians: "la hoja de coca no es droga." Or, at least it's not an inherently evil drug. 

THE ANNOTATED PERU QUIZ

We're back from our FABULOUS Spring Break (really, Fall Break for us) in Peru, and now to jumpstart us back to school, I think we all should take a test. So here goes:
1. Which one of the following foods that we tried was gross?
a) goat b) guinea pig   c) alpaca (like llama) d) ceviche (a raw fish dish) e) all of the above

2. What is the favorite soft drink in

 Peru? ________

3. Which of the following characteristics describes drivers in Lima?
a) courteous 

b) excellent 

c) patient 

d) all of the above 

e) none of the above

4. True or False. Karen is too old to stay in youth hostels anymore.

5. A trip to Machu Picchu is _________.

a. worth a thousand words

b. fabulous
c. expensive

d. rainy but still perfect

e. all of the above

6. Which of the following wool products smells bad when wet? a. alpaca b. vicuña c. llama d. sheep e. all of the above

7. There are well over ________ types of potato in Peru.

a. 10 b. 100 c. 1000 d. 10,000 e. one million

8. Fill in the blank. The name of the tall, peaky mountain in the middle of Machu Picchu is ______.

9. The view from our room in Cusco ___.
a. was breathtaking
b. only cost us $18 a night 

c. meant a hard walk uphill

d. all of the above

e. none of the above

10. True or False. The water is potable in Peru.

Annotated Answers
1.b. Guinea pig (pictured), called cuy, tastes exactly like what Krista thinks rat must taste like. The other foods were all yummy. In fact, Peruvian food has spice and lots of taste in general (unlike the bland food that Uruguayans eat).

2. Inca Cola. It's marketed by the Coca-Cola Company, which seems to own everything in Peru not already stolen by the Spaniards. My family loved it too, and Krista bought an Inca Cola t-shirt; she will be in mourning over not being able to get that drink, which tastes like a cross between cream soda and Big Red.

3.e. Oh my goodness. If you want to collect your life insurance, just drive around Lima for awhile. I've seen bad driving in say, Manila, Paris, or Rome--

this is a whole 'nuther league. Another little factoid for you: 1 in 7 cars in Lima is a taxi.

4. True AND False. It depends, because our hostel in Cusco was fantastic (we slept there 5 nights) and our hostel near Machu Picchu was more than adequate as well. In our hostel in Lima (only one night fortunately),

however, our room-with-only-kids-we-know didn't work out, and Ken and I had to share with other folks, one of whom was drunk, dirty, mostly naked, snoring, and yelling in his intoxicated stupor. Horrible. I'm only staying in hostels when we get the whole room from now on.

5.e. Machu Picchu was incredible. We LOVED it. 

We will probably drive you nuts with talk of it. We can't say enough great things about our two days there. A bit of trivia for you: the word "Inca" means "King." Also, for 

the birders out there, did you know that over 10% of all the bird species on earth can be found in Peru? Well, now you know.

6.c. Llamas smell bad, period. You'll be glad to know that any wool souvenirs we bought were all made of alpaca, which is softer than llama as well. Because 54% of Peruvians live in poverty, we bought almost all of the gifts we'll be taking back to folks in the States on this trip. We bought directly from the makers, instead of through middlemen, and we met some awfully nice people along the way.

7.c. There are over 1000 different types of potatoes found in Peru, and countless ways to prepare them. When I say types of potato, I mean that there's one variety that has blue skin and orange inside, another that has a red skin and an orange interior. All the potato dishes we tried were tasty.

8.Wayna Picchu. Good! 

You're doing just great on this quiz! 

Ken and Katie climbed this peak the second day, while Krista and I settled for the city of Aguas Calientes and a mountain that translates to"Happy Mountain."

9.d. We LOVED our hostel in Cusco. [For the record, it was called Samay Wasi Peru (I DON'T recommend the one in Lima, only the one in Cusco); we heard of people paying LOTS more money for what we got.] Cuzco is South America's oldest continuously-inhabited city, having been the seat of Incan and then Spanish power for hundreds of years. It is packed with Incan ruins, tiny little beautifully-paved roads, and over-eager, annoying street salespeople.

10. False. I hope that somebody from the Gates Foundation is reading this blog (unlikely), because somebody with some money needs to give these people potable water. I KNOW the money won't be coming from the Coca-Cola Company, because they also sell almost all of the bottled water in the country, which one must use even to brush teeth. For the record, I really only missed two things about Uruguay while we were away: one was delicious, drinkable water, and the other was

 my FAVORITE drink ever, even better than Diet Coke, Paso de los Toros Light, a light, grapefruit soda sort of like Fresca but way better.

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

You may think I take a long time to get to the point sometimes in English; you should hear me in Spanish! I use a strange mix of Tarzan talk (Me go there) and roundabout ways to say stuff, in order to use the few words I (sort of) know (Still I am please from Texas and I studying Spanish since 5 weeks today now until the 8th of May). All of us beginners (and that is almost all of us; there are 21 of us in the moron Spanish class; 2 students are in Intermediate, and 3 are in Advanced) have a long way to go, but we're way far down the road compared to where we began. Today, for instance, I understood many more words in church than I ever have before; however, they don't go together at all to form, say, a meaningful sermon or a communion devotional talk.

But we all are functional now, thanks to the hard work of our determined teacher Amelia and a lot of homework and study. We can go places and do things and actually get things done. 

Example: OK, so there is almost nothing to cook with in the upstairs apartment, and I determine to buy a colander for draining pasta and vegetables and fruit that we've washed. First, walk several blocks to the 

GayMar (next to Two Gays, I kid you not), which sells dishes and things.

Karen: Por favor, quiero comprar … ummm… una cosa para, no, por … (give up this unproductive language route and start down an alternate alley.)

Necesito un "colander," por favor. (blank look; after all, lots of people don't know the word colander in English. Try again.)

Despues de … ummm… que limpiar unas frutas … (lady shows me a scrubber to wash fruit; I see a closed conversational window and open another.)

Para … ummm… (I slide into a lingual portal where all the people are mute and gestures rule) …por el agua (then I gesture stupidly as if the water is pouring out through invisible holes.)

Saleswoman: ¡Ahhh, si! (She shows me a couple of colanders and says "laksljoigoien jepien guwoolle joeon lo0elw0j lwoen." At least that's what I hear.) I stand there awhile, looking for price tags, and, finding none and fearing another unintelligible "conversation," I select the cheap plastic one, thinking I'm pretty sure I can afford that one without having to try to break a big bill, which Uruguayans fear most in all the world and which brings on conversations I can't handle.

Go to check-out.
Different lady rattles off price, "llopnwdoiwpin- lppej onchwi."
I look at calculator, see price, pay that, and leave with a cheery "!Gracias!" to which she replies "Por favor.")
Nothing to it!

I've just gotta tell you...

... about THE “BLOG” OF “UNNECESSARY” QUOTATION MARKS. I go to this blog every few days, thanks to our friend Tim Archer, who found it somehow. It is hilarious if you're a punctuation geek like I am. Pictured is only one of many, many fabulous signs and images, and the blog owner Bethany writes hilarious headlines and descriptions.

End of advertisement. Enjoy!

THE SUMMER THAT WOULD NEVER END,,,

They've had snow a couple of days back in Abilene, and my friend Gayla hates to be cold. But we here are just finishing up summer by having a week of rain to inaugurate in the Fall. For Gayla, our life from about May 2007 until September 2008 would be a dream come true; it's been pretty much one long summer and early Fall. 

Why? Summer 2007 was followed by Fall 2007 in Abilene (true, there were a few cold days, even some snow, but for purposes of this blog, we'll call it Fall). Then we moved here, where it was HOT summer again; now it's beginning to be early Fall; then we'll return to Abilene in time for summer again to be followed by Fall—yet AGAIN!

Not only are our seasons a bit wacker-doodle, but our time is also. We are 4 hours ahead of those of you who are in Texas today, but tomorrow, when you Spring Forward for Daylight Saving Time, we will Fall Back (because Fall is beginning here!); thus, we will only be two hours later than you guys for the rest of our time in Uruguay.

MORE ABOUT CABO POLONIO

This beach place is isolated. How isolated? You can only reach it by hiking something

 like

 7 kilometers or by taking one of these huge 4X4 tank-like

 trucks over the sand to get there. There

 are waves crashing all over the place; there are vast sand dunes that go on and on. We ate our lunch on top of one

such dune, where we had spread out our same-blanket-we-take-everywhere, and made peanut

 butter and banana sandwiches. It was great, and I don't just mean because we got to delight our tastebuds with the 

mmm-mmm goodness of Jif Extra Crunchy peanut butter (our last of two precious jars), but also because we looked out at the vast Atlantic, and because we 

were together in this cool place, and because we could see God's wonderful creation

 in yet another of its interesting manifestations.

Also I've posted, just for fun, a picture of some beach-kill. It's a stingray, and, even though I'm no forensic pathologist, I'm pretty sure it died of the big shark bite that took out its whole middle and backside. 

Click to enlarge.

Cabo Polonio, Uruguay

Sometimes, if you're very, very lucky, you get to have church on a gorgeous beach with wonderful people. 

We were those people yesterday morning.

Thank you, Lord.

LAMEST OSCARS NIGHT EVER

OK, we Cukrowskis love movies, and we even love the Academy Awards. We have a party every year, complete with games, ballots, decorations, themed foods, prizes, and costumes. Not only did none of that happen this year since we were in Uruguay, but we just turned off the TV in frustration moments ago at 1:30 A.M. and didn't even finish watching the show. Why? First, it started at 11:30 our time, which is pretty late to start an overly-long show, but second, and far more importantly, they simultaneously translated the show on the only channel showing it. It made us crazy barely hearing the English in the background and then hearing the Spanish really loudly in the foreground! We are NOWHERE near good enough in our Spanish to make that work, but also it was annoying because we really did want to hear the presenters and the movie clips AS THEY WERE, not with voiceovers. I think subtitles would have been perfectly acceptable, but not voiceover. 

So I'm going to try to upload these pictures for you of the world's most lame Oscar party and then I'm going to bed—pouting and with a headache. :) I'll check in the morning to see who won.

THIS ONE'S FOR YOU, DAVID.

So we went to the Zoo in Buenos Aires, Argentina last week, and we saw some absolutely freakish little animals that run wild all over the zoo. They're rodents that look like a small deer got real cozy with a rabbit one drunken night and the resultant offspring were these things. We had no idea what they were, but, perhaps because today would have been my brother David's 44th birthday had he lived and I'm missing him, and, because he knew all kinds of weird facts and would have been happy to share them with you, I will tell you about this animal tonight in my best David manner.

The Mara, or Dolichotis patagonum, lives on the plains and scrubland of Argentina and can live up to 15 years. Males and females form long-term pair bonds, but the young form creches. They can easily weigh 25 or so pounds, which is a lot for what is basically a wild rabbit. End of lecture.

What you really need to know is that they're weird looking. See for yourself.

THE MILLION PESO BANK NOTE

There's a really fun short story by Mark Twain that I recommend (you can find it easily on the internet for free) called THE MILLION POUND BANK NOTE. Without telling you too much, this guy gets a lot of stuff for free because he only has a million-pound bill and nobody can break it. That's kind of what happens around here, but you don't need a million pounds (although I'd like to try!). Nobody wants to take big bills around here, and by big bills, I mean maybe 200 pesos, which is only $10. Forget about spending 500 or 1000 pesos. Only big purchases work for something like that. Maybe part of the reason is that people are relatively poor, and they're dealing in much smaller sums than we Americans are used to.

Nothing costs what it costs in my head. [I've written on this subject before, but it requires updating.] Things either cost more or less, but rarely is something exact on the money, so to speak. The average income in Uruguay is, I've heard, less than $10,000 a year. But you want to know something interesting? These poor people don't expect change when amounts don't merit giving out a coin. What I mean is, even though Americans count every last cent, here there isn't even a coin smaller than a 50 cent (1/2 peso) piece. I bought 102 pesos' worth of stuff at the convenience store next door the other day, and I paid with a 200. Rather than mess with giving me back all that change, the cashier gave me 100 pesos.

"No problem," he said.

Are you kidding me? No way would that have happened back in the States. From what I hear, this kind of thing happens all the time in stores, etc., and--get this--it always favors the consumer. It blows me away.

Here are some other examples of things that are way different priced here in reality than in my head: it's cheaper for us four Cukrowskis to go to the Old City (downtown) by taxi than by bus, which seems completely wrong to me, yet blue jeans cost an outrageous amount (on sale for $50-60; at the nice mall, they're $300). Back at home my hair color stuff (Revlon #42, in case you're interested) costs $3.00, but here it costs U$S 15-20 or more. It's outrageous to buy appliances here: for example, you can buy my really nice large fridge back home for what an apartment-sized one costs here.

I guess I don't really have a point tonight, other than to marvel at the generosity of the shop owners-- and really, a society as a whole that chooses not to sweat the small stuff.

TANGO VS. TENGO

OK, I've repented from my crankiness, and I'm writing a thankful blog entry instead. This past weekend, we went with all the students, the Penyas, and Lynette's parents to Buenos Aires, Argentina. What a wonderful, exciting, vibrant city! We just loved it, even though we were there only Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Our friends-who-have-been-missionaries-in-Argentina Steve and Lynette Austin, and Tim and Carolina Archer had told us it was great, and had given us some suggestions of what to do and see, and they were right! Too bad we didn't get to do everything, but what we did was just wonderful anyway. I'll write more about other things, but first I want to tell you about the tango.

TANGO
We went to a Tango show on Friday night. We ate a delicious dinner, and a fabulous 4-piece band played throughout, and

then 6 tango dancers 

and 3 singers walked us through the various development

al phases of the 

tango. A short course for you: it started as a low-class thing, became popular in high class places as well, Carlos Gardel is a biggie in tango singing history, and it's way cool to watch. All of us loved it!

TENGO=I HAVE
Another thing we couldn't help but notice was that, while there was a great deal of wealth in B.A. (1 in 30 people have plastic surgery of some sort), there are many poor, poor people as well. When I visited the cathedral and looked at a statue of Jesus near the Pink Palace (their White House, where Evita stood on the balcony), I could picture him crying as he pictured the haves and the have nots there in B.A. and elsewhere. Attached are some pictures of homeless and rat trap houses, which, of course, we breezed by in our air-conditioned tour bus. Ken did meet and introduce me to a shoe-shine man, with whom Ken struck up a 3-day relationship of sorts: they visited daily; they shared a meal; they spoke in Ken's broken Spanish; they waved when passing by. This man was doing his very best to make a living for his family, but he was having a hard time making it, but no matter what, he was a have not.

When we were at the tango, I thought about the similar word tengo, a Spanish word meaning I have. I have so much. I have a family. I have money. I have stuff, way too much of it. I have an education. I have this wonderful opportunity to travel. I have received so many more blessings than I deserve. I have thankfulness in my heart.

10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU

OK, I know it's not politically correct to say anything negative about someone else's country—and, to be sure, I LOVE traveling, and I'm loving living in Uruguay—but sometimes you just notice some of the bad stuff. And I'm in a foul mood, so I thought I'd share my peeves today, lucky you:

1. NOT GETTING MONEY: I went to the only ATM I have found that will take my ATM card in all of Montevideo today, and AGAIN it was out of money. So, I have maybe $5 worth of pesos to buy food for our supper tonight. Oh well… I'll go to the far-ish grocery store (Ta-Ta; for more juvenile comments about this and other name brand-names-that-don't-translate-well-into-English, see the comments under the blog entitled "Today I mailed a letter"), since I've walked this far already. No problem that I don't have cash, TaTa will always take my credit card.
Until today. After I had taken a long time shopping, waiting in order to have each vegetable weighed by the weighing-person, and after I had waited for the bread guy to bag my bread, and after I had waited in a really long line because everybody is buying back-to-school supplies, the checker rejected my use of my credit card. They always take my credit card with my photocopy of my passport. [For the record, we've been told, "Whatever you do, don't take your original passport out with you; after all, it could be stolen, and you'd be up a creek." Additionally, our passports are all being held hostage at the Brazilian Consulate for 3 working days while "processing" our visas.]
"No," she said, "You must have your original passport with you at all times." I told her I've always used it here with a photocopy. "No, you didn't," she informed me. Well! I WOULD have paid her with money, but remember, the stupid ATM machine had no money in it. I would have written a check, but forget about opening a checking account down here; ACU doesn't even have a checking account down here (a fact that astounds me), because it's so difficult for foreign entities to get one apparently. Stupid country.

2. OGLING, GROPING MEN: It is part of Uruguayan culture (actually, a large part of South American culture) to cat-call (piropos) women who are walking by on the street or whatever. If a woman smiles or responds at all, the guy or guys take that signal as their cue to up the ante. If you go to a club, like a couple of our students did last weekend (after checking out it was a good place for dancing, not all the negative stuff that can go with such places), you get groped and mauled and harassed against your will until you leave the club, and even then, you're followed, but fortunately one of the Study Abroad guys frowned them away. It may be cultural, but it's still BAD.

3. TRASH IN THE RIVER/OCEAN/STREETS: Many dogs roam freely around here, and I have to admit they're usually pretty friendly and docile. But they haven't learned to flush so to speak. The sidewalks are hazardous. You can routinely see people toss stuff on the ground as well.
And there's a general mistreatment of the amazing gift of water that this port city has. The river is so brown (yes, some of it's sediment, but much of it is pollution) that it was pretty gross riding across it on the BuqueBus ferryboat to and from Argentina this weekend.

4. CHOCOLATE -- They just don't get it. 

5. LACK OF AIR CONDITIONING -- This one would be Ken's #1 and ranks pretty high on mine as well. Yes, we get that we're spoiled Americans, and yes, we use too much of the world's limited resources, but hey, it's hot, really hot, and this is an industrialized country in a major city, folks. Couldn’t at least a couple of places, like say a library, a classroom, or a common room, have air conditioning?

6. ORANGES -- The fruit here is fantastic, fresh, and juicy. The vegetables are equally delicious. The oranges—and thus the orange juice—aren't. Florida oranges really are better.

7. ITTY-BITTY, STUPID NAPKINS -- Their napkins are terrible, weirdly-textured, unabsorbant, little useless things about the size of a playing card. You need about thirty to get the job done, which seems counter-productive if they're trying to save paper.

8. LOCKING EVERYTHING UP-- Here, in Casa ACU, where I live among friends and where we don't even lock the door to our apartment at night (it only opens to the student hallways), we lock and unlock doors all day and all night. For example, to go next door to the Spanish classroom, I leave the apartment (which, as I said, we don't lock because that would require using even MORE keys), go downstairs, unlock the wooden door that leads to the garage door, go through the door, relock the wooden door, go to the outside door, unlock it, go through the door, relock from the other side. Walk maybe twenty feet and then wait for either Ken or Rachel (who have keys to the church building, where the classroom is) to unlock that door, go upstairs to the classroom. If anybody is late, Ken or Rachel must go down the flights of stairs to re-unlock the door to allow them in.
VERY annoying.
But why do we do this, when basically we share much of this building with the church and when there are THREE ways (yes, count them) that we could go in there WITHOUT USING ALL THESE KEYS, without even leaving the building, or without inconveniencing anybody? First, there's a door that connects to the church in the hallway outside our bedroom. I repeat, there's a door that connects to the church outside our bedroom, approximately 10 feet from my bed; second, there's an elevator that opens to both Casa ACU and the church building, but we aren't allowed to use it; and third, there's a door in the garage/hallway that opens directly up to the church building. Stupid.

9. MEAT, MEAT, MEAT. We hear a lot about Uruguayan and Argentinian beef. "It's the best," people say, "and they eat a whole lot of it." In Argentina, both parts of that sentence are true; in Uruguay, only the last part of the sentence is.

10. SERRATED KNIVES -- I'm glad there are serrated knives in this world, and around here, since they eat so much meat, they need them. But there's not ONE regular, flat-edged knife in all of Casa ACU, to my knowledge, and I've seen none in all of Uruguay so far. Not one butter knife. Weird.

And some other things annoy me too, like crummy internet service, but I just don't remember what they are this minute. OK, I feel better now that I've vented, and I'll write much more positive entries henceforth. Thank you for listening.