Megan's Visit

I'm BACK!!!!!!!
Sorry I've been absent, I know Josh's posting frequency this week has been shocking, but hold on to your pants, and I hope you didn't miss me too much. Forgive me, I've been busy!
It only took six months, but finally a friend came to visit. Don't get me wrong family! Your visits were equally as amazing, equally as appreciated, but it meant a lot to have a friend come all the way from the States and taking a whole week off from work to boot!
Megan arrived two Friday's ago after a two hour delay in Miami. After she took a very fast shower and I shoved some empanadas down her throat we headed over to Retiro (my favorite barrio...not) to meet up with Dan Cowel at the Estastion de Omnibus. After a brief encounter with our friends Mike and Kyla (totally convincing Meg that we are popular enough to run into people, maybe a little misleading) we boarded our bus and began the long journey to Puerto Iguazu. 17 hours is a long time to spend on a bus, and even longer if you've just traveled from DC, but as the bus rolled out we treated Meg to her first taste of the Yerba, and gave her a lesson in Maté. Even better was the snack of Alfahores that was passed out a few hours into our trip. I love Via Bariloche!

Pretending I'm really good at preparing the Maté

Very good initial reaction, even if a bit faked for our sakes
(my Mom and Mia's actual reaction to Maté looked...exactly like this and they weren't faking!)

She's a natural...she loves it!

So I know Josh wrote an epic blog post that took him three days so I won't review the details of our trip, but here are a few of my photos from the short time we remained in Missiones:

Warning sign for dangerous animals!!

That's a lot of water

A sign made just for me!

Megan, a rainbow, and some kick ass water falls

Wandering the lovely paths of Missiones

Josh at the Devil's Throat!!! (Sounds cooler is Spanish, I promise)

In which I figure out how to use my camera

Josh and Dan

Meg and me!

Josh and me...I think you all recognize us by now though...

Parilla with the best Asado Tirado EVER!! and also where I swear I won't over eat and then proceeded to over eat to the point of being sick...It goes without saying that we danced all night, and then I ate ice cream and a hamburger. Yes, I am on a small diet that started today, after I stuffed myself with Choripan at Diego's last night. I swear my heart was crying after. But for real this time...I'm going to eat healthy starting today!

Tres Fronteres from the left: Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. Unfortunately the US has a silly policy where they charge people from South America extraordinary amounts of money to enter our country if they let them at all, so countries like Brazil have fought back...I don't think I'll ever be paying the US$130 you need to shell out to get there...so this might be as close as we'll come to Rio for a long time.

We arrived in Buenos Aires late on Monday, and finally got back to our house around 2. Megan was incredulous as to how the bus terminal can schedule a million buses to come back at the same time. Amazing that in just six months I've come to accept things like this as common place and expect them. Oh Argentina...sigh.
Anyway, so we proceeded to have a relaxed week where we saw some nice stuff all over the city, enjoyed beautiful weather, and ate like cows were going extinct.
We saw the Buddy Bears in their last week in BA. These bears are traveling around the world to promote peace. There is one from every country, and for some reason Einstein gets his own bear...random:

Ours was disappointingly boring compared to say...Egypt:

And way boring compared to this guy:

We also hit up the Recoleta Cemetary, and of course had a picnic in the Botanical Gardens. Mmm, milanesa and Quilmes, a match made in heaven.

Sharing the life force (Quilmes) with Meg and half liter bottles, so classy!

So those are all the photos I have, when Meg sends me some of hers I will post them as well, but we certainly had a good time. We hosted our best Asado yet on Friday night in honor of her despedida, and then hit up a few bars. The only thing to disappoint was that we stayed up all night on Friday only to emerge from the club into the poring rain at 6 am. Needless to say, there was no sunrise. Que lastima (I'm totally quizzing you, who remembers this phrase from Josh's last post?). Anyway, I was very sad to see her go, and after she left I consoled myself by eating even more meat that night at Jeremy's asado. Having Meg here made me miss my friends from home, and made me miss being with people who've known me for longer than six months. I love my friends here, and can't wait till we get to that point, but it was so refreshing to reminisce with her as we created new memories. At the same time it was some what strange to hear all about her life and the lives of my friends at home. I felt so disconnected from that world of 9-5, happy hour, dating, and 401Ks, and farther away from my friends than ever before. At the same time though, I was relived to know that this disconnect doesn't have the same affect on friendships, and came away from the week very happy that our friendship has remained stronger than ever even after all this time and physical distance. We joked and planned for the future. Moving to California together may not be as likely to happen as me visiting her in DC this winter (or your summer), but its fun to dream. To all my friends at home who I haven't kept in touch with very well, know that I'm thinking about you too!!!
But now its back to real life, but more importantly back to recovery. I am still exhausted from her visit, as I imagine she is. I plan on spending the rest of the week attempting to catch up on sleep, and of course watch lots of The Wire.