Thursday, December 9, 2010

THANKSGIVING AT THE BEACH

I haven’t been too great at updating my blog for the past two weeks—I’ve been on two different trips and managed to have exams in there. I wrote around 40 pages—all in Spanish, of course. I’m yet to update on my Thanksgiving. On Thursday, November 25, about 140 American students invaded the small colonial town (an UNESCO World Heritage Site) of Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. Located just across the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires and a 1 to 3 hour Buquebus boat ride (depending on if you take the fast or slow boat), it’s a popular day trip from Buenos Aires. The director of our program, Mario, owns a small boutique hotel in Colonia, so we were all invited to his house for an Argentine attempt at Thanksgiving—there was turkey and stuffing but no mashed potatoes, corn bread or pumpkin pie. Oh, and the Argentine favorite choripan (a chorizo sausage sandwich), obviously.


Post-Thanksgiving lunch we all donned bathing suites and spent the afternoon around the lovely pool (weather aside, I usually try to avoid a bikini post-pigging our on Thanksgiving Day, but I decided to make an exception).


After a night in Colonia, I headed to the super luxe Uruguayan beach town of Punta del Este, a favorite vacation hot spot of all the wealthy Argentines, with my friends Gaby, Janie and Savannah—we were not the only IFSA kids who decided to spend a few days at the beach; a number of our friends were also at Punta del Este that weekend.


While the city was close to dead—it’s currently late spring, and the beach will be a crowded mess in a few short weeks—this gave us plenty of room on the beach. We weren’t quite brave enough to test the water, but the sunshine was just perfect. It’s a personal goal to make all of my friends who’ve spent the past few months bundled up in the Northern Hemisphere jealous of my tan. Sorry! Well…not really.

Here are some pictures from my sunny Thanksgiving Weekend:

At our program director Mario's home in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay.
My first Thanksgiving spent lounging by the pool.

It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without...choripan?

yumm yumm yumm

Gotta have the facturas

Sunset on the beach in Colonia

Soaking up the sun in Punta del Este with our new Paraguayan friends.

Returning from the beach with our $5 towels

Even though Punta del Este was pretty much dead in terms of tourism, we managed to meet a number of locals and had two fun nights out on the town.

On our last day in Punta del Este we went to the historical hotel Casa Pueblo.

Doesn't Casa Pueblo look like some sort to sand castel?

With Punta del Este's emblematic hand sculpture.

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