Discouraged.

This week absolutely flew by.

Seriously. It was slightly ridiculous. It's already Friday, and I am getting ready to peace out to some super ghetto hotel thing near Punta del Este. I am actually really excited about it. I have been looking forward to Punta del Este for a while. It's supposed to be one of the sexiest beaches in the world. Which is a good thing, because those are the only kind of beaches I go to. Obviously.

...That was a joke. Total joke.

I am using my new backpackkkkkk for this trip, since it is only a weekend trip, and I wanted to test it out. So far, as I look at it leaning against a chair stuffed with most likely unecessary things for my trip, I am psyched out of my mind because I have a backpack. I want to backpack everywhere. In the world. The whole. Freaking. World. Seriously. I can't even deal with it. I have wanted a backpack my whole life. And now I have one. Like, a backpack backpack. SO. Pumped.

Anyway. I don't really know what else to talk about. I feel like it's no big deal I am here now. And in a way, it's not. But in a way, it is. Because I am still 5,000 miles from anything remotely familiar. And yet, this place is becoming so familiar. I have my favorite café (Café Bacacay) and favorite places to shop (Punta Carretas) and I am a regular at my laundry place. It's a cool experience, and I feel like I don't know if I would be able to have anything like this, where people remember me and are super nice all the time to me. People are nice at home, but I am not a regular anywhere, at least in California. I mean, I regularly go to Ace Hardware, and I see the same like 5 employees, but no one remembers me or anything. And here, the Eric Bana waiter look-alike at Bacacay and Fluffy (another waiter at Bacacay, do not ask to hear the story behind his Alias) remember us and think we are the most fantastic people ever. It's a lot more personable here. Like I said before, it's definitely a transitional phase right now. Which I am not sure how I feel about.

My Spanish is finally starting to improve. After a billion years and a few weeks of solid humiliation and torture, it's finally getting to the point where, once I am in the Spanish zone, I don't really have to think. I mean, I do. But not to string together the basic sentences and make jokes and stuff like that. If I was trying to tell a story, yea, it'd be harder. And I can't write novels or moving poems or anything, but I am just starting to wrap my brain around Spanish. I cannot wait to see where I end up at the end of Lent, or at the end of this whole excursion here.

Every Thursday I do this thing called Let's Start Talking, where you teach english to people who only know a little bit or no English, and you read passages from the bible and talk about them. It sounds like it's no big deal, but it is really actually very cool. It varies depending on the skill level of the person that you work with. The first two times I read with people that knew quite a bit of English, but tonight, the person I worked with knew absolutely no English. So that was a big of a stretch. I spoke a ton of Spanish.

The key is practice, people, I don't care how many years of Spanish you take in school, it only matters how much you talk to people who are native speakers. Seriously. My new life goal is to travel the world for monthes at a time and teach myself various languages. French? Portuguese? Italian? Hindi? This world has too much to offer to be stuck in one place. Seriously. Don't do it. Get out of your house. Go outside.

Random tangent. I really do enjoy LST a lot. It's a way to get to talk to people and get to know them.

The other night we went to a Philharmonic thing at the Teatro Solis. It was awesome. We had box seats, which was awesome, because it made me feel like someone back in the old days, who had their own boxes and sat around and talking in stiff English accents and were classy and awesome. Alas, it is not back in the day, and I am not English, but still. Close enough. But the song at the end that they sang (It was a tango group with the Philharmonic) a song called "Ocho Letras" about Freedom and Liberty (ha, I capitalized those. They are that important) and the crowd absolutely went nuts. I am not completely sure why, because I cannot decipher men bellowing patriotic tunes, but it was an extreme show of national pride. Not in an obnoxious way, but just a pure love of country as the crowd clapped and whistled and shouted for an encore. It was incredible. I don't think I will ever have the skill to describe it. It was really fun that we got to get dressed up (check my facebook) and go out to something like that. Even though it promptly decided to pour down rain the hour before we were going to leave. Whatever. It still rocked.

K. I just wanted to get a little blog in before my computer and I break up for a weekend. That's what I am up to. Sorry it's not a great blog, I am really tired. Until later.

Paz.