wrapping things up

so, unexpectedly, on thursday we had a meeting. we all walk in joyous that we get to hang out again as a group and then betina dropped a bomb.. she explained how gripe A was a big deal.. as we all knew.. and then said our program was ending..like saturday. a full week early which is a huge bummer because we had so many fun cultural activities planned! (including a futbol game). However, the city of buenos aires has considered this gripe A an epidemic and is in an emergency state. Basically when you have thousands of people commuting on the same dirty buses everyday, living so closely and breathing the nasty air, you have to be careful.. SO, besides the disappointment of everyone scattering starting saturday, there is good news..katie and i's adventures start a week early and last for 3 weeks now instead of 2.. But before i can clear my head and focus on my future adventures, i have to finish, finally, explaining uruguay. brevity is where im at now, so yeah. So i mentioned all the people we met at the hostel and their stories.. While we were eating breakfast, i went to get an apple and it was almost completely rotted on one side but conveniently sitting next to another apple so one could not tell the severity of its nastiness..i grab it and show the hombre running the place.. he makes a joke to ease the situation.."we like to eat them like that here" haha polite way of dismissing it and i join and just toss it in the garbage. we headed out to see the city a little including some cool plazas, an old church, a fountain with hundreds of locks locked on it, and a super interesting building with about 20 resturant inside (all of which claim to be the best but the one right next to it..has the same menu) Outside this chaotic eatery katie and i invested in some sheep guantes (gloves) that will be much appreciated come time to hike in bariloche. The man was soo sweet who was selling them and once we paid, he randomly went in to talking about the meaning of life and how it was short so you need to enjoy it (in spanish of course). The city was feeling a little, no a lot, desserted because it was cold, windy and elections day. THey take elections serious so much so that from sat night at 12 am to sun at 12 am no alcohol is sold and none is really consumed..because you need to be aware and vote coherently. anyways, when we were walking through the city, 2 out of the few people we saw told me to be extremely careful with my camera (nikone d200 is not easy to hide).. i was being careful but decided that i had enough warnings and would suspend my pictures for the rest of the tour. next: grabbed our luggage, bus to the bus terminal, bus to colonia. On the side of the highway were people playing soccer..this country LOVES soccer. after a wonderful 2 hour nap on the bus, we arrived in colonia. apparently the bus ride was somewhat strange because we kept stopping in the middle of nowhere and people were getting on and off..this was weird because we were on an intense motor coach, not just a city bus. Anyways, hostel viajero welcomed us and we were excited to be there. We met some girls there later on, Joanna and Sabina who had been traveling for 4 months because they just graduated college and there were no jobs..so they went traveling! There was also another woman, uanna who is a teacher in france who was meeting her friend in brazil. One of the girls on the trip with us, jenny, had randomly started speaking with a boy in french earlier at breakfast so she did it again with this woman.. I was just thinking how cool it'd be if, when hanging out with my friends and we came across someone of another language, say chinese, all the sudden i just had a full blown conversation with them..then i'd be cool :) hostel viajero was very nice, had a balling fire and spacious lobby to watch tv..not to mention the plethora of movies to chose from. My time there I watched more movies than i have in the past 1/2 year probably..Wall E (which i thought i'd seen, then realized i had fallen asleep the first time, and then feel asleep in the last 10 mins this time) Tropic Thunder (dont waiste your time!) Australia (somewhat cute) and thats all. For dinner we headed to the USA supermarket, bought some pasta and spinach sauce complete with sprite and chocolate for dessert. I was the cook and it was challenging to read directions.. i just hoped i knew enough to wing it. Jenny and I succeded and feed the 5 of us with just the right amount. we went to bed satisfied and tired..i wish i could say warm but that wasnt the case..the place was very very chilly but luckily i used an alaska trick (laying your clothes on top of your blanket for extra warmth). When we awoke, we had an awesome breakfast of dulce de leche and pan! as always, extremely healthy :) it was rainy outside and still very cold so we weren't in a hurry. thats when we experimented with tropic thunder and australia.. after, we headed to the market for lunch. On our way, we saw a shoe store and you know me, we had to go in. I've been itching for some converse like shoes so i could fit in while in buenos aires (running shoes or hiking shoes do NOT cut it). anyways, we found some knock off brand for about $16 US dollars and called it a deal. 4 out of 5 of us got shoes, i call that successful :) We waited the rain out and then braved the wind. The little town of colonia was even more desserted than montevideo the day before. We continued being tourists none-the-less and it was SOO windy, bone chilling really. We saw the town lighthouse and climbed up to the top for 20 pesos (not even a US dollar). It was super super windy up there but a nice view! on the way back to the hostel, we stopped for some coffee and baileys to warm us up. The hot chocolate here is funny because they warm up milk and then put a stick of chocolate in the bottom.. inovative. We decided to be on time for the ferry this time instead of late so we headed on at about 6. There were 2 indian guys at our hostel hanging out who hadnt stayed but were waisting time before their ferry. We said goodbye and ended up seeing them later on the boat. SO now heres the fun part.. the buque bus (ferry). We were seated and ready to go, i just wanted a nice hot, constant shower and my own bed. At about 7 45, 45 after planned departure, a woman speaking spanish rapidly came on the speaker. We all gathered about the same info, canceled, leaving tomorrow...crap. I need to mention that because we were leaving uruguay, we spent all our uruguayan money. We asked if we could sleep on the boat and originally they said no. they ended up letting us stay and we moved to first class..along with the rest of the boat. We were chatting away with the indians from texas when another group of guys started chatting. They were a band from holland but made up of very different people. They were all between 30-35 and some of them had real jobs, but they all looked like punks. Anyways, we started chatting, they were drinking their wine, offered us some and i gave some reasons as to why i declined. Religion was a small mention in there and that started it.. the door opened and stayed open for about 4 hours. THere we were: 11pm, in the uruguayan port, on a boat, and they started asking about religion. I always like to see where other people are coming from after i tell them my perspective so i returned the questions to alonso once i had answered mine. We decided this would be a full blown, very civil and calm conversation as religious conversations are usually not carried out that way. I went first, and told my beliefs, then jenny who is also chrisitan. we ended up answering questions for a while. THen some of the boys went, Alonso told us how we was criticized as a boy because when he was going through catholic school, he started asking questions about why things didnt match up and parents got made. For this, he decided to denounce all religions and actually write against them.